Jasser Skewers CAIR & Its Political Islamist Agenda

The Washington Times ran a story recently about the Council on American Islamic Relations, nominally a civil rights organizaton that purports to represent American Muslims. The Washington Times noted that CAIR's membership had declined by 90% since 9-11, and that they were managing to stay afloat by the good graces of 12 unnamed donors who contributed almost the entirety of CAIR's 300 million dollar operating budget. CAIR responded here, claiming with numerous adjectives the article to be incorrect, though failing contest any of the facts with contrary facts. M. Zudi Jasser, former U.S. Naval Officer and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, quite eloquently takes issue with CAIR and their response to the Washington Times article:

The Washington Times printed a report by Audrey Hudson this week, “CAIR Membership falls 90% since 9/11”, discussing CAIR’s (Council on American Islamic Relations) membership numbers as disclosed on CAIR’s own 990 Tax returns. Within hours, CAIR described the report as a ‘hit-piece’ in a hate-filled rant of a press release and action alert. A review of the Times piece reveals simple reporting of data from CAIR tax forms on their dwindling membership numbers, donor numbers, and yet increasing funds.

The piece quotes Parvez Ahmed, CAIR Chairman, on the countervailing increase in the number of CAIR chapters around the country during the same period post 9/11. It also cites the recent Department of Justice (DOJ) listing of CAIR as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) HAMAS fundraising case. The DOJ refers therein to CAIR’s leadership and origins as, “members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organization.” For all CAIR’s objections, there was no refutation of any of this.

With the elaboration of these facts and more, CAIR still ran wild describing the Times reporter as “having a vendetta against our organization and the American Muslim community since she was barred from a recent CAIR news conference because of her sloppy and agenda-driven reporting.” With a report revealing that its national membership figures reported to the IRS are less than 1700 members in 2006, they still have the audacity to say that criticism of CAIR is equivalent to criticism of over 3 million Muslims in the “American Muslim community”.

This is, clear and simple, the modus operands of “political Islam” and its Islamist operatives. This is also more than likely one of the reasons for their dwindling membership numbers. While they may occasionally be doing good work for the civil rights of certain Muslims in America on selected cases, their Islamist political agenda and their persistence in the claim that criticism of CAIR is akin to criticism of all American Muslims is dishonest, deceptive, and a hijacking of our faith community.

Rather than respond with a semblance of a valid intellectual discourse or refutation of the ideas and facts contained in the June 12 report, CAIR preferred to respond with further empty screeds of hyperbole, victimization, and false claims of religious intolerance and hate-mongering. They claim to be working toward eliminating hate. Yet, they have a wild imagination of hate and rush to claim victimization as they deflect any substantive debate. This actually makes a compelling case for the fact that their attention to perceived incidents of intolerance for Islam and Muslims is a means to an ends of the empowerment of political Islam. In fact Nihad Awad told a gathering of Muslims just that in April in a discussion on their ‘flying imam’ lawsuit in Virginia at ADAMS (All Dulles Area Muslim Society),

Reporting to an organization like CAIR is important, because it is empowering. It is empowering to the Muslims themselves who report, it is empowering to the organization, and it is important to the status of Muslims within the United States. Also it is a powerful tool and message to the government and the legislators, to those who make the laws in the country, to know that this phenomenon has to be dealt with, it has to be dealt with effectively, and results have to be seen….

CAIR scavenges for claims of civil rights abuses not necessarily just to try and humbly build bridges to the greater American community. Is their agenda, in fact, more about empowering Islamists and intimidating non-Islamists?

The rule of law and the protections of our Constitution are certainly the cornerstone of the protection of our rights of religious freedom in America. But there is a fine line between the legitimate representation of individual Muslims whose rights of religious freedom have been infringed and the blatant manipulation of a system for the advancement of a variant political ideology at the expense of some victims.

True to form in the usual Islamist fallback to public criticism, CAIR claimed that the Washington Times was ‘anti-Muslim’ and ‘anti-Islam’. They use the protection of religion when the facts are not on their side. They use the discourse of politics when they want to push forth their Islamist agenda with the presumption of speaking for all Muslims. They will delve into the political only on their own terms in both foreign and domestic policy but when they are on the receiving end of political criticism they run for cover under the guise of victimization.

Why all of the venom directed at the Washington Times or at their reporter, Audrey Hudson-- one of the few national reporters willing to peel the Islamist onion and look deeper into Islamist organizations like CAIR and their ideologies? There is absolutely nothing in the Times report anti-Islamic or anti-Muslim. It is simply critical of CAIR. To say that CAIR is synonymous with Islam or Muslims is Islamism and gives all Muslim non-members of CAIR (the vast majority of American Muslims) short shrift.

It is long overdue for America and especially for Muslims to discuss why such political discourse and reporting could ever be described by an organization like CAIR as being anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic. In fact, a more cogent argument could be made that such reports are pro-Muslim and pro-Islam since they ultimately rescue most Muslims from the grip of Islamists and Wahhabists. Such discussion of realities and ideologies will go a long way toward preserving a positive image of Islam and the inclusiveness of all Muslims under a purely spiritual Islam devoid of a political agenda.

Nothing is more clarifying than, CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper’s own quotation in their Action Alert,

“It is CAIR’s principled and effective defense of the American Muslim community and our criticism of failed foreign and domestic policies that have made us the target of these scurrilous attacks. We will not be intimidated or silenced by hate-mongers.”

Herein, CAIR claims to be defenders of the entire Muslim community. Where did I sign up for that? Herein, CAIR admits to its primary active critique of American domestic and foreign policy on behalf of the entire American Muslim community. Thus, CAIR and so many of the other American Islamist organizations are about much more than simply “defending the civil rights of Muslims”. If only they stuck to civil rights, less Muslims would have problems with them. They are about the penetration of political Islam into our foreign and domestic policy under the guise of civil rights. In fact, their constant refrain about intimidation and hate-mongering is in fact a cultivation of their own industry. The lawsuit they are sponsoring on behalf of the ‘flying imams’ in Shqeirat v. U.S. Airways, et al, is much more about intimidation than about bridge-building or religious freedom as AIFD has noted.

The next step in this assessment of constituency is to understand their ideology. So much of the substantive criticism of CAIR arises from their unwillingness to be specific in condemnations of radical Muslims, radical organizations, and despotic regimes. Perhaps their dwindling numbers are in fact an ideological problem which does not speak to the majority of American Muslims. Honest debate will have to include a discussion of CAIR’s and other American Islamist organization responses to the following questions which I have been querying for a long time.

1- Will CAIR work to dismantle and lead an organized effort against terrorist organizations and individuals by name beginning with Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Jamaat al-Islamiya, and HAMAS to name just a few of the radical Islamist enemies of America? Will they name and ideologically engage the extremism of the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia, the theocrats of Iran or the despots of Syria, Egypt or Sudan, and the litany of other dictatorships in the Muslim world? Empty generic condemnations of terrorism are of no impact.

2- Will CAIR acknowledge that political Islam (Islamism) whether militant or not, is the toxin which feeds the terrorism committed by radicalized Muslims?

3- Will CAIR acknowledge the need out of honesty for a faith-based civil rights organization to equally focus upon the civil rights abuses of Muslims by other Muslims as well as by non-Muslims whether it occurs in mosques, Muslim organizations, or so-called Muslim nations? A dismissal of Muslim abuses is hypocrisy.

4- Will CAIR acknowledge that counter-terrorism is a greater public responsibility to the organized American Muslim community than the obsession with the protection of our civil rights? Is it not the primary role of Muslim American organizations to lead the ideological war against radical Islamists? Isn’t this the number one issue on the mind of most Americans in 2007? Non-Muslims can do nothing to deconstruct this poisonous ideology. Our fellow Americans living in fear for their security are looking for us to lead this fight. The credibility of Muslims is suffering deeply as a result of the complete denial of this responsibility by groups like CAIR. In fact, there may be no better way to preserve our rights than by leading an ideological movement against political Islam and militant Islamism.

5- Will CAIR join anti-Islamist Muslims in declaring that the “Islamic state” regardless of its democratic processes is in principle significantly inferior to a “pluralistic Constitutional democracy under God” like the United States? Will CAIR declare the concept of a global Caliphate as archaic and no longer relevant to Muslims in the 21st century? Is the concept of the Muslim “ummah” or “nation” archaic?

6- Will CAIR join what was described in the Pew poll as the 49% of Muslims who felt that the mosque was not the place for the discussion of politics? Will they then help AIFD expose political sermons and their agenda around the United States? Will they moreover call upon our fellow co-religionists to fully and unequivocally separate the spiritual from the political? If they will not, will they recognize that they only represent Islamists and those who believe in political Islam—the remaining 51% according to Pew?

7- How can they honestly claim to speak for anyone beyond their membership and donors?

The Washington Times piece about CAIR was not a hit-piece nor was it anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic. It begins the long overdue debate about the agenda of organizations like CAIR and where they stand with regard to political Islam and these questions. Soon, mainstream media and government leaders are going to need finally to begin to ignore the intimidation tactics of organizations like CAIR and to engage political Islam on the questions above.

They need to do so without fear of violating political correctness or offending pious Muslims. Spiritual Islam and non-Islamist Muslims in fact still are often at the mercy of Islamists, not just in America but across the globe. This is often not only due to the passivity of the majority of non-activist Muslims but to the propping up by government and the MSM of Islamists. We saw this in the recent refusal of PBS to air ABG Films, Inc. documentary, Islam v Islamists. Many anti-Islamist Muslims yearn for the day when the personal domain of the faith of Islam is not poisoned by any national domestic and foreign policy agendas of Islamist organizations like CAIR. American political discourse by activist Muslims should be all about our common national interests and universal humanitarian principles and not about being Muslim, Islamic, or being victims. The Muslims who cannot make this distinction may as well form overt Islamic political parties and make it more obvious as to their intentions and platforms when it comes to American domestic and foreign policy.

Read the entire story here.

Read More...

Summary only...

Jasser Finds Danger & Dissimulation In Pew Poll On Islam In America

M. Zudi Jasser, former U.S. Naval Officer and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, examines the recent Pew poll on Islam in America. He finds, on one hand, the poll results very disconcerting, and on the other hand, flawed in the formulation by Islamists invited by Pew to assist in developing the questions:

Significant national attention has turned in the past week toward dissecting all of the data from the Pew Research Center’s study on an array of subjects concerning Muslim Americans. The full Pew study, Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, contains information on a number of issues of great importance to our direction in the ideological struggle against political Islam (Islamism). The data obtained by Pew, first and foremost, demonstrates the necessity of future polls of Muslim Americans, perhaps with more of an ideological focus on the exact place of Islamism, anti-Islamism, Shari’a and Muslim reform and enlightenment issues in the context of the practice of Islam in 2007.

The Pew poll touches on the periphery of some of these issues but leaves the reader to infer a number of conclusions on political Islam from the data. The focus of most media attention thus far has simply been the study’s indicators regarding the threat of terrorism from the Muslim population and its counterbalancing data on the apparent general assimilation of Muslims.

Optimism v. Realism: Where’s the counter-jihad?

Optimistic mainstream media (MSM) have understandably focused on the study’s positive aspects indicating that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, assimilated, and condemn terrorism. This optimism is necessary because that same majority holds the keys toward decreasing the numbers of the more troubling minority. The realists, however, did the math and raised valid concerns about the implications of the number of potential militant Islamists. The statistics reveal that 1% of the study’s estimated 2.3 million Muslim Americans say that suicide bombings against civilian targets are “often justified” and 7% felt, “sometimes justified.” This demonstrates a potential threat of 184,000 potential Islamist terrorists in the United States. The study does nothing to connect the imminent responsibility of the remaining 92% in changing, deprogramming, and defeating this radical 8%. Moreover, even more concerning is the total 26% of those younger than 30 who even ‘rarely’ find justification for terrorism. Again, we find no questions or conclusions from Pew about the responsibility of the remaining 74% to lead a counter-jihad.

Similarly, 5% of Muslim Americans expressed “somewhat favorable opinions of Al Qaeda”. Yet, only 63% of foreign-born Muslims were able to muster “strong hostility” toward Al Qaeda, with 52% of all native-born Muslims, and a shocking 36% of African American Muslims doing the same. The need for a counter-jihad becomes all the more relevant in this context with such an “underwhelming” majority of Muslims demonstrating the moral courage simply to identify the clearest enemy of America in our time. Certainly, the seeds of leadership in this counter-jihad will come from these Muslims who have the courage to name Al Qaeda and have the courage unequivocally to condemn terrorism as an immoral act with never a justification.

Thus, from here, what is so sorely needed in reviewing the data, and what few have done, is actually to begin to connect the study’s plethora of revealed ideologies of Muslim Americans diagnostically to the radicalized minority over which so many have expressed concern. To discuss the 184,000 potential terrorists (FOA - friends of Al Qaeda, if you will) in a vacuum, with no ideological connections or offshoots from the Muslim majority is to flail helplessly in post 9-11 diagnostics with no insight into cause, effect, or treatment. FOA are not a crime problem.

There can be no other explanation as to how it is that Al Qaeda, basically a euphemism for the whole of radical Islam, is able continually to regenerate itself like a metastatic cancer immune to any chemotherapy. The Fort Dix Six had no apparent contact with Al Qaeda. Yet their ends, their means and execution were the same as Al Qaeda. The only common thread is radical Islam, which is a militant offshoot of an even more common thread - political Islam.

Islamist Insiders obfuscate the dangers of political Islam

The Pew Research Center interestingly sought the advice of some known leading Islamists such as Ingrid Mattson and Ihsan Bagby. Islamists will often try to obfuscate or deny the threat and the goals of political Islam. It doesn’t seem that any anti-Islamist Muslims had any input on the poll, which perhaps would have clarified the results on political Islam. Regardless, the data still did not camouflage the problem of political Islam, and the hope from the study that there is a significant plurality if not a majority of Muslims who are potential anti-Islamists. We ignore the signs and symptoms of the threat of political Islam in the Pew study at our own peril.

Make no mistake: current Islamist leadership in America are already running away from the reality of political Islam revealed in this study. Ingrid Mattson, an adviser to the study and the head of the Islamic Society of North America released her “Reflection on the 2007 Pew Report”. Her self-described ‘Call for Moral Leadership’ was not in any way a call against the ends of political Islam. It was not a clear, solitary call of moral courage against Islamist extremism. It was, rather, an apologetic against terrorism, which had the audacity to claim a moral equivalency of Al Qaeda’s terror means with the claim by America’s politicians that American armed forces also employ torture! Ms. Mattson equates the political ends of Al Qaeda with the ends of our armed forces intending to liberate Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a sweeping statement of grand moral equivalency between terror and torture, she says, “We have allowed the appropriation of sinful and immoral means for political ends.”

Nowhere in Mattson’s political screed presented under the laudable guise of theological leadership of “imagining of a new Heroism” is she actually able to condemn the ends of America’s enemies—the Islamic state. Yet, she is able to juxtapose in an insulting equation a discussion of the barbaric evil of the likes of Al Qaeda with an admonition to our legislators and President to stop supporting torture—a classical Islamist doublespeak mixture of religion and politics. Such juxtaposition of radical Islamism with American political leadership feeds directly from the demagogic techniques of Islamists in order to speak to their Islamist constituencies under the guise of even-handedness. This technique actually perpetuates a greater divide between Muslims and the general American public. Is it any wonder that political Islam is thriving and continuing to provide political fodder for its militant offshoots when such a mixture of religion and politics speaks for American Muslims? . . .

Reviewing the Pew data in the context of political Islam

On the war in Afghanistan

The penetration and influence of Islamism (political Islam) is deep in the American Muslim community. While most of the media focused on Muslim opinions of the Iraq war. Only 35% of American Muslims supported the war in Afghanistan while 61% of the general public did. The only explanation for the difference between Muslims and the general American public who are exposed to the same anti-war MSM is the impact of rampantly political sermons and the additional consequences of the constant barrage viewed by Muslims of national and international Muslim media (from Al Jazeera to CAIR’s eletter) against the war.

Muslim media repetitively defined the conflict in Afghanistan in terms of a “war against Muslims” rather than a war against the oppressive Taliban, who would not give up the sworn enemy of the American people - Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, within this much deeper discussion is evidence that political Islam brings with it loyalty to the ummah (the transnational Muslim nation or community) over loyalty to one’s own nation even when our national interests in a just war such as in Afghanistan are clear and moral.

On extremism

The study repeatedly demonstrated a significant direct correlation between religious observance and extremism. The Islamists have and will dismiss the extremism as ‘political extremism” having nothing to do with the practice of religion. While to a moral, spiritual Muslim, extremism and coercion is an anathema, this correlation, however, between Muslim observance and extremism is a direct indicator of the lethality of political Islam (Islamism). Political Islam is a dominating societal and governmental ideology that is wedded to and exploits the theology of Islam while trying to overwhelm the voices of reason, pluralism, humility, and secularism. Islamists in their typical denials will reject the correlation of extremist views with religious observance as misguided or purely political unrelated to religious practice. They cannot have it both ways—that is to live and practice in a toxic mixture of religion and politics and then say that the dominating political ideology of Islamism has no connection to the religious (immoral leadership).

The Pew study confirms this. Its indicators of political Islam—opinions of the use of mosques for social and political speech, attitudes against the war in Afghanistan, conspiracy theory explanations for 9-11, and an affection for big government (i.e.) - all correlated directly with religious observance. Thus, the pervasiveness of Islamist political ideologies (shown in the Pew study) within the Muslim community provides a substantial stimulus for radical Islam and its extremism. It only stands to reason that a pervasive political ideology that cloaks itself in religion will have an order of magnitude toward greater fertilization within the religious practicing community than outside it. Obviously, the more immoral the religious leadership and its apologetics, the more political Islam will spread. Thus the correlation between religious observance and extremism is clear. Certainly, some Islamists may preach non-violence, which can serve as a short-term prevention of militancy. But in the long term, the only antidote is the separation of the political from the religious in Islam.

. . . Islamism can only be defeated by a counter-jihad from a spiritual Islam devoid of the political and governmental realms and led by a universally moral, pluralistic, and humane construct from the God of Abraham. . .

On conspiracy theories

How is it that only 40% of Muslim respondents would identify the fact that Arabs carried out the attacks of 9-11? This cannot be ignored. More specifically, 32% of American Muslims refused to answer and 28% were in complete disbelief that Arabs did it. Again, the more religious the Muslim American, the more likely they are to believe in this conspiracy theory. So if Islam is to provide moral courage for making brave stances against evil, significant concern should be raised that political Islam and its propaganda have a significant impact upon moral clarity.

Political Islam at its core thrives on dishonesty, fabricated enemies, and conspiracies in a world of spin over truth and corruption over morality. At the center of mechanisms of denial, is the creation of fantastic stories, which create false assumptions and feed the ego of those with inferiority complexes. In order to exert control, theocracy (political Islam) must manipulate information and create enemies while uniting the masses in Machiavellian ends - in many ways planting the seeds for fascism. . .

On Mosque and state

A significant percentage (43%) of Muslims felt that mosques should express their views on social and political questions. The fact that 49% felt that the mosque should not be involved in politics gives hope to the dream that ultimately the primary vehicle of religious education, the mosque, can possibly be cleansed of the toxic Islamist influence. However, the penetration of political Islam is not only in the mosque, it includes the Muslim media, and Islamist political organizations. So the 49% is as small as it is possibly because only 40% of Muslims frequent the mosque. Therefore, their answers may have more to do with idealized perceptions of the mosque than of the faith of Islam and the need to separate religion and politics. More study is desperately needed in this question.

For the very reason that we are daily faced with national Muslim organizations who exploit the faith of Islam for their own heavy political agendas, it is more and more essential to dissect the current reality and telescope the process by which anti-Islamist Muslims can lead the extrication of spiritual, moral Islam from political Islam.

On American Nationalism

When American Muslims were asked whether they were American or Muslim first, 47% felt they were Muslim first and only 28% American first. The study compared this to Christians who reported 42% as being Christian first. This comparison is unfortunately not valid in this context. A better comparison would have been to ask Muslims and Christians whether the United States should be “under God,” “under Islam,” or “under Christianity.” It would stand to reason that while most Christians would say ‘under God,’ far more Muslims would say, ‘under Islam.’ In the concept of political Islam, the theocratic Islamic state has not been reformed or defeated in the way the Christian theocracy has in American history. Those 47% of Muslims pose a more significant ideological threat in the context of current Islamic thinking vis-à-vis the state.

This is especially true when considering the ends sought by radical Islamists. - theocracy over our pluralistic democracy. The study demonstrates this by showing that “13% of those who think of themselves primarily as Muslim believe that suicide bombing to defend Islam from its enemies can be often or sometimes justified compared with 4% of those who are American first.” Additionally, those who identified themselves as Muslim first were twice as likely to believe that Arabs did not commit 9/11 (40%-20%). Those who were American first were much more likely to accept that 9/11 was committed by Arabs (61%). Again we see a significant correlation between religious observance, radicalism, and Islamism.

Political Islam is the problem. Identification of nationality as Muslim is fertile soil for conspiracy theories. The only antidote to the spread of Islamism is a counter-jihad, which includes a strong American nationalism embodied in a belief in liberty, freedom, and pluralism under God. American nationalism alone is not an antidote because Islamists may have theocratic goals for their own American patriotism. American nationalism can defeat Islamism only if it also takes back the mantle of faith from the Islamists with the growth of a moral, spiritual Islam that can combat the immorality of terrorism in a counter-jihad from within a nation under God but anti-Islamist.

The Future

While political Islam may seem to be pervasive, it is not overwhelming. The untold story in this poll is the hope it gives to anti-Islamist Muslims. As noted, a plurality of Muslims - 49% - believe that mosques should stay out of politics. Interestingly, most of those are the foreign born Muslims versus the native-born Muslims who seem to have grown up in Islamist incubators without understanding the harms of political Islam, which so many immigrants lived through.

If we are going to win this global conflict, analysis of studies like this one should not be overly negative or positive and should be reviewed through the Islamist lens to understand the context—the root cause (Islamism), effect (radicalization), and treatments (a counter-jihad separating spiritual Islam from political Islam). A morally clear spiritual Islam can eliminate politics from the domain of faith, which should be only a personal journey of individual Muslims to God. This process requires ijtihad, which is a re-interpretation of scripture in light of modern day. It also requires imams and scholars with moral courage to denounce each and every suicide operation around the world as immoral, un-Islamic, and barbaric without any justification - ever.

. . . One can only hope that the next study of the American Muslim population will include a much more probative questioning, specifically with regard to political Islam in order to distinguish how many Muslims believe in theocracy over pluralistic democracy. Current Islamist leadership in mosques and national political organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Council), MAS (Muslim American Society), or ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) have no personal interest in pushing an exposure of political Islam since it embodies the daily practice of their organizations.

With time, the MSM, the government, and the general American public will have to become more savvy regarding the need to expose the insidious threat of political Islam and its causative association with radical Islamism.

Read the entire story here. It should be noted that, in a Fox News story, Walid Phares offers similar warnings and a similar criticism of the poll.

Read More...

Summary only...

Turkey To Resolve Constitutional Crisis By Holding June Elections

Prime Minister Erdogan has opted to resolve Turkey's contstitutional crisis by calling for new elections to be held June 24. The background to this crisis is here, here and here. The crisis, nominally about legal requirements to elect a President, actually turns on the fundamental issue of what the nature of the Turkish state should be. Should Turkey retain its identity as a wholly secular state, or should secularism be discarded in favor of political Islam? This from Reuters, reporting PM Erdogan's decision to resolve the issue democratically:

. . . The AK Party has proposed bringing forward the parliamentary election to June 24 from November 4. Erdogan is expected to win a second term after five years of strong economic growth since his party came to power in 2002.

The AK Party will also propose that in future the president be elected by popular vote, not by parliament, Erdogan said.

Deniz Baykal, leader of the secularist main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), said it was too late for this parliament, elected in 2002, to overhaul the constitution.

"This is about a fundamental power struggle. Erdogan is saying 'ok, you're using everything in order to stop me, then I am going to the public and I will ask them (what they want)'," said Mehmet Ali Birand, a leading Turkish commentator.

A threat by the army, which regards itself as the guardian of Turkey's secular system, to intervene in the presidential poll, an opposition boycott of the first round vote in parliament and an anti-government rally of up to one million people on Sunday sharply increased tension in Turkey.

The decision to bring forward the election brought relief to financial markets which had suffered their biggest fall in a year over the previous two days on fears of instability.

The European Commission welcomed the planned early election. Italy said recent events in Turkey showed caution was justified over its admittance to the 27-nation European Union.

Turkey, constitutionally secular and its 74 million people predominantly Muslim, began EU membership talks in 2005. . .

Read the entire article here. The AKP Party is clearly quite popular becasue it has very successfully managed a reform of the economy and a period of rapid economic growth during its years in power. That said, this election will almost certainly turn far less on the economy and far more on the issue of retaining a strictly secular government.

(H/T Dinah Lord)

Read More...

Summary only...