Traitors of Islam
Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk"
An Appraisal of His Life and Works
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was born in 1881 in a shabby quarter of Salonika. After resigning from his job as petty Government clerk, his father, Ali Riza, twice failed in business, sought escape from his miseries in alcohol and died of tuberculosis when Mustafa was only seven years old. His mother, Zubaida, in strict Purdah and entirely illiterate, ruled the family. In contrast to her husband, she was a devout believer and a pious Muslim. Like every other Turkish woman of her day, her entire life centered round her eldest son. With her deep religious convictions, Zubaida wanted him to become a pious scholar.
But the son had different ideas. He fought tooth and nail against any kind of authority and was openly insolent and abusive to his teachers. He was arrogant in the extreme in the presence of his fellow students and refused to join the other boys in their games which made him justifiably unpopular. If he were interfered with in any way, he fought them, preferring to play alone. Once during one of these violent episodes, a teacher, blind with fury, intervened and beat the boy so hard that his honour was offended. Mustafa ran away and refused to return to the school. When his devoted mother tried to plead with him, he stormed back at her. Zubaida was in despair, not knowing what to do. Finally an uncle suggested sending him to the military cadet school in Salonika and making a soldier of him. Since it was subsidized by the government, it would cost them nothing; if the boy demonstrated ability, he would become an officer; if not, he would at least remain a private. In any case, his future livelihood was assured.
Although Zubaida did not approve, before she could stop him, twelve-year-old Mustafa persuaded one of his father's friends to sponsor him with the college authorities. He took the examination and passed as a cadet. Here he found himself. He was so successful academically that one of his teachers bestowed upon him the name Kemal which means in Arabic, "perfection." Because of his brilliance in mathematics and his military subjects, he was promoted to a teaching position on the staff where he much enjoyed flaunting his authority. After obtaining the highest grades in his final examinations, he graduated with honors in January 1905 with the rank of Captain.
During this period he joined a rabidly nationalistic students society known as the Vatan or "Fatherland." The members of the Vatan prided themselves on being revolutionaries. They were bitterly hostile to the regime headed by Sultan Abdul Hamid II and condemned him for his suppression of all so-called "liberal" ideas which undermined the authority of Islam. They never wearied of blaming Islam as responsible for Turkey's backwardness and vent their bitter spleen upon the allegedly antiquated Shariah, and made the Sufi mystics the object of special ridicule. The members of the Vatan were bound by oath that they would oust the legitimate Sultan and replace him by a Western-styled government complete with Constitution and parliament, destroy the authority of the Ulema or religious scholars, and abolish purdah and the veil, declaring absolute equality between men and women. Soon Mustafa Kemal became its chief.
Mustafa Kemal's opportunity for extending his influence finally came when, just before the ousting of Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1908 by the Young Turks, its ruling party, The Committee of Union and Progress invited him to join them. However, being a late-comer, he was obliged to carry out orders when his nature demanded that either he control everything or take no part at all. He grew increasingly restless and dissatisfied. He had no respect for the other members whom he regarded as beneath his contempt. He particularly hated such sincere Muslims as the Prime Minister, Prince Said Halim Pasha (1865-1921) and the Minister of War, Anwar Pasha (1882-1922), with whom he quarreled incessantly.
For the next ten years he distinguished himself in the military profession as he was a born soldier and leader. Gradually by dint of his domineering personality, combined with shrewdness, he assumed more and more political influence. He spent his evenings in secret meetings behind locked doors planning for the coup d'etat which would give him absolute dictatorial power. His opportunity arose when at the end of the First World War, he took the lead in defending the territorial integrity of Turkey against the combined European powers who were intent upon dismembering the "sickman of Europe" and hastening his demise with all deliberate speed. By thwarting these sinister designs and whipping up the enthusiasm of the populace to fight to the death for their country, Mustafa Kemal Pasha became a national hero. When the Greeks were defeated and Turkey's victory assured, the Turkish people went delirious with joy. They hailed him as their Saviour and bestowed upon him the honorific title Ghazi or "Defender of the Faith."
Invitations from diplomats now overwhelmed him urging him to become their champion of the East against the West. To the Arab statesmen he replied in the State Assembly: "I am neither a believer in a federation of all the nations of Islam nor even in a league of all the Turkish peoples under Soviet rule. My only aim is to safeguard the independence of Turkey within its natural frontiers--not to revive the Ottoman or any other Empire. Away with dreams and shadows! They have cost us dear in the past!"
To the Communist delegations seeking his support he expressed himself even more bluntly: "There are no oppressors nor any oppressed. There are only those who allow themselves to be oppressed. The Turks are not among these. The Turks can look after themselves. Let others do the same. We have- but one principle-to see all problems through Turkish eyes and guard Turkish national interests." *
* The Grey Wolf, H. G. Armstrong, Capricorn Books, New York, 1961Mustafa Kemal Pasha's declared policy was to make Turkey within its natural frontiers a small, compact nation and, above all, a prosperous, modern state respected by all the other nations of the world. He was so convinced that he and he alone was qualified to accomplish this task that he claimed: "I am Turkey! To destroy me is to destroy Turkey!" *
* The Grey Wolf, op.cit., p.227.No sooner had he assumed power than he made bold to declare that he would destroy every vestige of Islam in the life of the Turkish nation. Only when the authority of Islam was utterly eliminated could Turkey "progress" into a respected, modern nation. He made speech after public speech fearlessly and brazenly attacking Islam and all Islam stands for:
"For nearly five hundred years, these rules and theories of an Arab Shaikh and the interpretations of generations of lazy and good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and criminal law of Turkey. They have decided the form of the Constitution, the details of the lives of each Turk, his food, his hours of rising and sleeping the shape of his clothes, the routine of the midwife who produced his children, what he learned in his schools, his customs, his thoughts-even his most intimate habits. Islam-this theology of an immoral Arab-is a dead thing. Possibly it might have suited tribes in the desert. It is no good for modern, progressive state. God's revelation! There is no God! These are only the chains by which the priests and bad rulers bound the people down. A ruler who needs religion is a weaklings. No weaklings should rule!" *
* The Grey Wolf, pp. 199-200When Abdul Majid was elected as Khalifa, Mustafa Kemal Pasha refused to allow the full traditional ceremony to be performed. When the Assembly met to discuss the matter, Mustafa Kemal cut the debate short: "The Khalifa has no power or position except as a nominal figurehead." When Abdul Majid wrote a petition for an increase in his allowance, Mustafa Kemal replied thus: "The Khalifate, your office is no more than an historical relic. It has no justification for existence. It is a piece of impertinence that you should dare write to any of my secretaries!"
* The Grey Wolf, op.cit., p.201On March 3, 1924, Mustafa Kemal presented a bill to the Assembly to oust the Khalifate permanently and establish the Turkish nation as a purely secular state. However, before this bill was even introduced and made known, he had prudently made certain to muzzle all opposition by declaring it a capital offence to criticize anything he did.
"At all costs, the Republic must be maintained... The Ottoman Empire was a crazy structure based upon broken religious foundations. The Khalifa and the remains of the House of Usman must go. The antiquated religious courts and codes must be replaced by modern scientific civil law. The schools of the priests must give way to secular Government schools. State and religion must be separated. The Republic of Turkey must finally become a secular state."
* The Grey Wolf, pp.207-208Consequently, the bill was passed without debate and the former Khalifa and his family exited to Switzerland. The new regime then enacted the following :
"The preamble of the new (Turkish) Constitution speaks of full dedication to the reforms of Ataturk and Article 153 prohibits any retrogression from these reforms. It said:
‘No provision of this Constitution shall be construed or interpreted as rendering unconstitutional the following reform laws which aim at raising Turkish society to the level of contemporary civilization and at safeguarding the secular character of the republic which were in effect on the date this constitution was adopted by popular vote:
1. The law of the unification (and secularization) of education of March 3, 1924.
2. The Hat Law of November 25, 1925.
3. The law on the closing down of dervish convents and mausoleums and the abolition Of the office of keepers of tombs and the law on the abolition and prohibition of certain titles of November 30, 1925.
4. The conduct of the act of (civil) marriage of February 17, 1926.
5. The law concerning the adoption of international numerals of May 20, 1928.
6. The law concerning the adoption and application, of (the Latin letters for) the Turkish alphabet (and the banning of the Arabic script) of November 1, 1928.
7. The law on the abolition of titles and appellations such as Efendi, Bey or Pasha, of November 26, 1934.
8. The law concerning the prohibition against the wearing of (indigenous) garments of December 3, 1934....’Complete denial of Ataturkism remains impossible and inconceivable. It is impossible because the Constitution prohibits it and inconceivable because old and young have accepted many of the consequences of the reforms and Westernization retains its popular magic as the promise for a richer life." *
* Turkey Today and Tomorrow: An Experiment in Westernization, Nuri Eren, Praeger, New York, 1963, pp. 100-102.During the period these reforms were being enforced, Mustafa Kemal Pasha married a beautiful, European-educated lady named Latifa who, during the struggle for Turkey's independence, was encouraged by him to dress like a man and demand for women absolute equality. But the moment she grew self-assertive and insisted upon being treated as a respectable wife instead of trampled upon like a door-mat in his unfaithfulness, he furiously divorced her, and sent her away. After his divorce from Latifa, his shamelessness knew no limits. He drank so heavily that he became a drunkard and a confirmed alcoholic. Handsome young boys became objects of his lust and so aggressive was his behaviour toward the wives and daughters of his political supporters that they began sending their womenfolk as far as possible out of his reach. Venereal disease wrecked his health.
In describing his character, H. G. Armstrong, author of The Grey Wolf, writes:
"Mustafa Kemal Pasha had always been a lone man, a solitary, playing a lone hand. He had trusted no one. He would not listen to opinions that were contrary to his own. He would insult anyone who dared to disagree with him. He judged all actions by the meanest motives of self-interest. He was insanely jealous. A clever or capable man was a danger to be got rid of. He was bitterly critical of any other man's ability. He took a savage pleasure in tearing up the characters and sneering at the actions even of those who supported him. He rarely said a kind or generous thing and then only with a qualification that was a sneer. He confided in no one. He had no intimates. His friends were the evil little men who drank with him, pandered to his pleasures and fed his vanity. All the men of value, the men who had stood beside him in the black days of the War for Liberation were against him. (pp. 213-214)
And since no Dictator can tolerate any rivals, Mustafa Kemal Pasha lost no opportunity crushing all political opposition.
"The secret police did their work. By torture, bastinado, by any means they liked, the police had to get enough evidence to incriminate the opposition leaders who were all arrested. A Tribunal of Independence was nominated to try them. Without bothering about procedure or evidence, the court sentenced them to be hanged.
The death warrants were sent to Mustafa Kemal for his signature in his house at Khan Kaya. Among the death warrants was one for Arif who, after a quarrel with Mustafa Kemal, had joined the opposition. Arif, his one friend, who had stood loyal beside him throughout all the black days of the War for Independence-the only man to whom he had opened his heart and shown himself intimately. One who was there reported that when he came to this warrant the Ghazi's gray mask of a face never changed; he made no remark; he did not hesitate. He was smoking. He laid the cigarette across the edge of the ash-tray, signed the death warrant of Arif as if it bad been some ordinary routine paper and passed on to the next....
He would do the thing properly. He would give a ball at Khan Kaya that night also. Every one must come--the judges, the Cabinet, the Ambassadors, the Foreign Ministers, all the notables, all the beautiful ladies. All Ankara must celebrate.. ..
The dance began quietly. Dressed in immaculate evening dress cut for him by a London tailor, the Ghazi stood talking in a corner to a diplomat. The guests moved cautiously watching him. Until he showed his mood, they must step delicately and talk in subdued tones; very dangerous to be merry if he happened to be morose…But the Ghazi was in the best of spirits. This was to be no staid state function. It was to be a night of rollicking fun.
‘We must be gay! We must live, be alive!’ he shouted as he caught hold of a strange woman and fox-trotted on to the dance floor with her.
The guests one and all followed him. They danced--if they did not, the Ghazi made them. The Ghazi was at his best, tearing his partners around at a great pace and giving them drinks in between the dances....
Four miles away in Ankara the great square was lit up with the white light of a dozen arc-lamps. Round it and into the streets had collected a vast crowd. Under the arc-lamps below the stone walls of the prison, stood eleven giant triangles of wood. Under each was a man, his hands pinioned behind him and a noose around his neck-the political opponents of Mustafa Kemal about to die.
In the great silence each of the condemned men spoke in turn to the people. One recited a poem, another said a prayer and still another cried out that he was a loyal son of Turkey...
At Khan Kaya most of the guests had gone. The rooms were stale with the stench of tobacco smoke, of spilt liquor and the foul breaths of the intoxicated. The floors were littered with cigarette butts and the tables strewn with cards and money.
Mustafa Kemal walked across the room and looked out of a window. His face was set and gray; the pale eyes expressionless; he showed no signs of fatigue, his evening clothes as immaculate as ever. The Commissioner of Police had reported that the executions were finished. The bodies below the triangles had ceased to twitch. At last he was supreme. His enemies were banished, broken or dead." *
* pp. 229-236.Meanwhile the rumble of opposition from the Turkish people became a roar. The volcano finally erupted in 1926 when the Kurdish tribes in the mountains staged an open revolt against the Kemalist regime and all it stood for. Mustafa Kemal lost no time taking action. Ruthlessly all Turkish Kurdistan was laid waste; villages were burned, animals and crops destroyed, women and children raped and murdered. Forty-six of the Kurdish chiefs were sentenced to be publicly hanged. The last to die was Shaikh Said, the leader. He turned to the executioner and said: "I have no hatred for you. You and your master, Mustafa Kemal, are hateful to God! We shall settle our account before God on the Day of Judgment!"
Mustafa Kemal was now absolute Dictator. The Turkish people accepted such anti-Islamic reforms as the banning of the fez and turban, compulsory wearing of Western clothing, the Latin alphabet, the Christian calendar and Sunday as legal holiday, only at dagger's point. Thousands of ulema and those who sympathized with them sacrificed their lives rather than submit to the destruction of all they held sacred. Nothing can be further from the truth than the delusion that the Turkish people wanted any of this. The intensity of resistance can be imagined from the fact that Ataturk imposed martial law nine times. So despised is this Dictator by millions of Turks, particularly in the villages and small towns, that the mere mention of his name is cursed.
In 1932 Mustafa Kemal decreed that every Turk must adopt a family name as is customary in Europe and America. He chose for himself Ataturk which means "The Father of the Turks". Six years later, his health completely ruined, he died of cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcoholism.
"The category "psychopathic personality" has been called the wastebasket of psychiatry. Into it are dumped all those men who are not psychotic, not psychoneurotic, not feeble minded-yet there is something very much wrong with them.. ..The psychopath is not psychotic, not "insane." He knows where he is and who he is and what time it is; he dwells in our world, not the fantasy world of psychosis. But the psychopathic syndrome engulfs his whole personality as much as psychosis. The psychopath is not deficient in intelligence. Indeed he may be of above-average intelligence. It is his emotions that are out of kilter, his moral development, his "character." He is cold, remote, unreachable, indifferent to the plight of others, even hostile. He "knows" intellectually the consequences of his criminal acts to himself and to his victims but he is unable to "feel" these consequences emotionally and so he does not refrain from them. He never feels remorse or shame. If he is a murderer captured, he is never sorry that he killed but only that he got caught. He is the hired killer for the mob; for him to kill is nothing. He rejects society. He rejects any obligation to it.... He is in perpetual rebellion. He cannot form permanent emotional ties to anyone. His sex life is random, chancy, for what he wants is sexual satisfaction and the partner matters not .... No reliable statistics exist on the number of psychopaths incarcerated but nobody doubts that among them are the most dangerous humans alive. That is why the prisons are filled with them." *
* Break Down The Walls: A Study of the Modern American Prison, John Bartlow Martin, Ballantine Books, New York, 1953, pp. 259-261.Word for word, this is an accurate description of the personality and character of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk; the only difference is that instead of being recognized for what he was, as absolute Dictator, nothing could inhibit him from committing his crimes on a national scale.
None welcomed the dictatorship of Kemal Ataturk more than the intellectuals and politicians in America. The Jews among them accorded him the most enthusiastic praise of all. How the traditions of political freedom and democracy America claims to champion can be reconciled with the atrocities committed under this Dictatorship is an unsolved mystery until the reader understands that the democratic West regards these human rights strictly for home-consumption. Under no circumstances can they be exported to any Muslim land. Official publications from the American Information Service did not hesitate to support such authoritarian regimes so long as they were not openly affiliated with the Communist bloc. Dictatorship, according to this view, is justified if it effectively implements the modernization of the country.* The peoples of these "under-developed" places are too backward, tradition-bound, ignorant and illiterate to be allowed to choose their fate. Only the all-wise Government can decide what is best for them. Westernization is the supreme virtue and no sacrifice of moral scruples is too great to attain this end. Therefore any means, including the most ruthless tyranny, is sanctioned with the full blessings of America and the other Western democracies if it accelerates the disintegration of the Islamic way of life.
* see Modernization: the Dynamics of Growth, edited by Myron Weiner, Voice of America Forum Lectures, Washington D.C., 1966.What is the purpose of Kemalism? The answer can be found in a recent book written by a highly placed diplomat. In describing the daily life of a typical Turkish urban family, as compared with five decades ago before Ataturk, he jubilantly remarks that only the food remains unchanged. After gloating over the "emancipation" of the wife and daughters, along Western lines and their discussion round the dining table about their "Sunday outing", an evening at the movies or dinner at a restaurant--"all new features in Turkish family life"--he triumphantly concludes: "Religion hardly ever crosses their minds except during Ramadan when grandfather or an old aunt fasts." *
* Turkey Today and Tomorrow, Nuri Eren, op. cit., p.161.).excerpt of pages 131-144 from Islam and Modernism, Maryam Jameelah, Mohammad Yusuf Khan & Sons, Lahore, 1965/1988
References:
* The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Bernard Lewis, Oxford University Press, London, 1961.
* Turkey Today and Tomorrow: An Experiment in Westernization, Nuri Erren, Pall Mall, London, 1964.
* Conflict of East and West in Turkey, Halide Edib, Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1935.
* The Grey Wolf, H.C.Armstrong, Capricorn Books, New York, 1961.* These are the most important classics of Muslim modernism. They belong on the "black-list" and should be approached with extreme caution because they have all done (intentionally or unintentionally) irreparable harm to the Islamic cause.
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