Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like it’d be easier to pretend to be a Christian than a Muslim living in their respective fundy societies. Go to church, praise Christ – ain’t a thing. Islam has all these duties, dietary obligations, dress codes, and grooming habits to keep track of.
97% of the population in Turkey is Muslim. Turkey is a secular, parliamentary republic with no state religion. It has had universal suffrage for both sexes since 1933. Their constitution provides for freedom of religion. The influence of any religion, including Islam, is forbidden. Their form of government is strongly Western-influenced. Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952 and their defense is closely tied with the U.S.
Turkey may be the exception in the Muslim world, but they prove that secularism and Islam need not be mutually exclusive.
I’m an atheist, FTR, so I don’t expect things to be different for me if the U.S. was predominantly Muslim, and expect that our government would continue to not based on or influenced by any one religion.
That’s a good reason, too. But would that have to be different for Islam to be popular here? Would Islam’s development as a state religion have made it harder to have persecuted sects that would want to form their own country away from everyone else?
As a devout atheist, I had to hold my nose when voting “Better Christian.” Even with Christians in the majority, this is still mostly a secular country. I don’t see it continuing that way if Muslims are the majority.
And I assume they have a history of supporting LGBT rights?
Not.
That honestly did not occur to me. I had no clue as to what their track record is regarding gay rights. For that, I admit to being ignorant. Ignorance fought.
American Christianity hasn’t exactly been a shining example of tolerance for homosexuals either.
“Their constitution provides for freedom of religion” :rolleyes:
Then explain why the “Vatican”, the Phanar, the headquarters of 300 million Orthodox Christians has their priest generating seminary shut down by the government.
Andy why the law in Turkey now requires the church patriarch to be a Turkish citizen.
By the hands of this “secular” government there will soon be no Orthodox patriarch in Turkey because the government has outlawed their ability to produce priests.
I again find my ignorance fought. I was completely unaware of this. I clearly have an incomplete understanding of what life is like in Turkey, having gotten most of my information from Wikipedia and from other anecdotal sources. I apologize for not having a solid foundation for my argument.
I have a friend from Istanbul that bounces back and forth from here and there. She says most people say they are Muslim, but don’t really practice it, like most US Christians, it would seem.
Depends on what flavour of Islam would be in place, pretty lax like Turkey, Wasaabi or some Taliban nightmare.
If it were like Australia is now, pretty secular but most people say they are Christian it would be no different to now.
Just like christians. Or jews.
You will find religious fanatics in all of the three “world” religions (judaism, christianity and islam), and you will find secular people in “jewish”, “christian” and “muslim” societies. It’s just that you notice the muslim fanatics more, since they are less similar to yourself.
No. It’s like the way that Mayan Indians in Guatemala, or voodoo practitioners in New Orleans, practice a syncretic religion that is loosely Catholic.
If you’re talking about Wahhabi, that’s not one of the lax forms of Islam. Wahhabi is very fundamentalist and intolerant of any deviations from what it considers the only true religion. Not just Islam but the Wahhabi interpretaion of Islam - most Wahhabi anger is directed against other Muslims who they feel have strayed.
Is “Wasaabi” a Japanese offshoot? 
Maybe sisu was thinking of Sufi Islam, which is pretty moderate.
“it would make no difference.”
- did mean Wahhabi but I was eating some sushi as I typed!*
it should have read "Depends on what flavour of Islam would be in place, pretty lax like Turkey **NOT **Wahhabi or some Taliban nightmare.