The Turkish headscarf vote...

In and around Eminonu, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

The Turkish Parliament is going to vote to probably allow women to wear headscarves at university, and in doing so they will be smashing down one of the main pillars of secularism, whioch is teh basis of the modern state of Turkey.

A harmless act, maybe, but this is quite possibly just the start and teh question is then raised about what happens when these women graduate and will they be allowed to retain their scarves as they go out to work as teachers, doctors, civil servants and so on.

As regular eraders of this blog will know, I am fairly against public shows of religion, which I believe shoudld be a personal thing and kept away from public life. I also think that Ataturk did his country a great service when sweeping away outward shows of religion and set his country on course to be the secular democracy which it now is, ready perhaps for accession to the EU within twenty years.

One only has to look at failed states like Iran and Israel to see what too much religion in public life can do...