A civilisation of monekys

According to a special report on Turkey by The Economist: "Turkey has an especially significant place in the Muslim world. Thanks to the legacy of Ataturk, it is a rare example among Muslim countries of a functioning secular democracy. (23 October 2010)"

Really? A country that is virtually at civil war can hardly be said to be a functioning democracy. Kurds are 14% of the people, and yet Ataturk's continuing legacy of nationalism foments hatred between Turks and Kurds. This was Ataturk's real legacy: a brutish nationalism that denigrated Islam and denied Muslim brotherhood, thus turning Muslim Kurds into pariahs. He may have been a good soldier, but he was a disaster as a statesman.

And look at their funny alphabet: instead of the beautiful cursive Arabic script, they have adopted weird Latin letters with marks above and below that make them incomprehensible. I can read Farsi with relative ease, but Turkish is a different story. By adopting an alien script, Ataturk has completely cut off the Turkish child from his and her cultural roots in the Perso-Arabic world.

The first time I saw a mini-skirt was in Istanbul - on a Turkish woman with, admittedly, good legs. The lower classes wore long skirts concealing their legs. This was in 1970, before I moved on to the real land of mini-skirts and hot pants: England. To monkey England and Europe seems to have been Ataturk's idea of civilisation.

To the best of my knowledge, monkeys don't have a civilisation. But they say six monkeys typing for a million years can produce a play by Shakespeare. I'm sure about that: I am equally sure that no number of monkeys typing away forever will ever produce even a verse by Sheikh Sa'adi.

Shaken and Speared, Not Stirred

we weren't conquered
by Shakespeare

we were conquered
then Shake-speared

an open
and shut
case of
de-Sa'adification

the beauty of Shakespeare

My compatriots are always going on and on about the beauty of Shakespeare, but how did this beauty get here?

We hadn't always known about Shakespeare. Before 1757, we had never even heard of him. Then after we were conquered, we learned English and began to study English literature, ignoring our very own Persian literature.

Thus, as a conquered people, we discovered the beauty of Shakespeare.

Now, after learning Persian, I see what we have lost: what is Shakespeare compared to Sheikh Sa'di?

But thousands of my compatriots each year will 'discover' Shakespeare and never think about our loss of freedom.

That is the tragedy of history.