Egyptian zebibas and Turkish headscarves

Published in Turkish Daily News, 18 August 2008

Religiosity is quite difficult to measure. Is it the wearing of religious symbols that shows how deep a society is religious? Can you measure what role a religion plays in a society by keeping records of attendance throughout the years and come to the conclusion that high attendance means high religiosity and low attendance low religiosity?

This has been the case for studying religiosity in Europe. Attendance -- or lack of it -- to official churches was taken as proof that religious belief was in decline, almost non-existent. Yet, religion in contemporary Europe proves that although attendance to traditional churches has fallen along with the trust of Europeans of any authority and institution, religious beliefs have modified themselves and given birth to “belief without belonging” and non-traditional forms. It appears that God has not died after all; it's just that our measurements have been faulty and religious beliefs still play a significant role across Europe.

A similar problem of measurement emerges when we try to assert that Islam is rising or falling in a given country. Is it the number of people at the mosque? Or the number of people who wear headscarves? Given the fact that all women wear headscarves in Iran, can we conclude that Iranian society is deeply Islamic? Given that under the Taliban every man prayed regularly and attended the mosque, can we conclude that Afghan society was full of devout Muslims? In both cases, enforced practices are in no way true reflections of how deeply Islam is internalized.

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Measuring religion in Turkey

This fundamental problem in social scientific research has serious implications for ongoing arguments about the “rise of Islam” in Turkey. There are two types of evidence used to argue that Turkey is becoming more Islamic: anecdotal and quantitative. Anecdotal evidence is made up of personal stories of the daughters of friends, who went “undercover” overnight or of foreigners who have been coming to Turkey every couple of years and say they feel people are more religious now. Quantitative evidence is the result of surveys that present a percentage for the broader society based upon data found through studying small populations, such as questionnaires showing us what percentage of respondents want Shariah rule in Turkey.

Anecdotal evidence is always problematic as it is driven from a small sample wearing subjective lenses and drawing subjective conclusions. Where I live, whom I know or what I am worried about may easily define what I see or think about Islam, which may never reflect the full picture accurately. Quantitative research suffers from similar weaknesses in design and outcome, but the most important issue is that the data itself is hardly conclusive.

It is true that quantitative studies as well as anecdotal narrations show us, with a serious margin of error and no authoritative percentage, that the numbers of women who wear headscarves in Turkey has increased. Yet, those who conclude that these data on their own prove the indisputable fact that theocracy is on its way shall not rejoice that quickly.

Egyptian zebiba

Allow me to show the problem with this premature conclusion by comparing Turkey with Egypt. Almost every year, I travel to Egypt and realize the increasing number of men, especially young, who have dark spots on their foreheads. These are called “zebiba,” and it is claimed that a life of prayer leads to visible marks on the spot where the head touches the prayer mat during Islamic prayers.

So, the increase in the number of “zebibas” should ipso facto mean the increase of religiosity among Egyptian men. However, I never see “zebibas” in any other Muslim country, but only in Egypt. Also, “zebibas” are increasing especially among young men, signaling the possibility that the traditional assertion of lifelong devotion is short-circuited by the youth. Honest conversations with Egyptians show further that most men use certain prayer mats and work “extra hours” to burn their skin so they can be accepted by the Muslim Brotherhood and find socioeconomic support.

This rational investment in “zebiba” points out that when religious groups gain social significance and individuals can benefit from association with them, human beings will learn to play the game in line with their own calculations of cost and benefit.

Turkish Headscarves

A similar point can be made about headscarves in Turkey. The quantitative “facts” that headscarves are increasing but the number of people who want Shariah rule in Turkey is still less than 10 percent, signal a significant problem with those who read the headscarf data as undeniable evidence of a Turkish retrogression to Iran. In many ways, the power-center change that came with the Justice and Development, or AK, Party has developed a new elite. Until recently employment, economic opportunities and state “favor” demanded one kind of affiliation; now the new game in town demands another. So the rise in headscarves might also be seen as a “rational social-economic investment” not reflective of deep religiosity.

On the other hand, one cannot deny that on some other levels Islam is gaining a fresh popularity in Turkey. Turkish Islam is increasingly becoming attractive on its own terms. When it is juxtaposed with other Islams across the world, it is the most dynamic, and believe it or not, secular, modern and pragmatic expression of the Islamic faith today. Ironically, Turkish Islam owes its regeneration and modernization to Ataturk's legacy and the current failures of Turkish politics and globalization..

The Turkish Fog of Morality

Published in Turkish Daily News, 9 August 2008

In Thailand, I am told, bits of the movies which are deemed too sexual or immoral are not cut out as in other countries, but only blurred. Thus the viewer stares at a misty screen for the duration of the "improper" scenes. This interesting form of censorship, referred to as "fog of morality," ironically mystifies what the viewer cannot watch and eroticizes even the most common and boring expressions of sexuality we have grown accustomed to seeing on the big screen.

A European friend living in Bangkok recently expressed her displeasure of having to watch some scenes of the movie "Sex and the City" blurred. It is quite interesting that although "Sex and the City" has a quite low age certification in Europe, in Thailand, the country that serves as the capital of sex tourism and most crooked sensualities, relatively mild scenes of the movie are deemed "improper"

Coverage of dark rumors:

This disparity between what goes on in broad day light and shown in public, as well as blurring of a scene as a form of censorship, provides us with a quite helpful metaphor in conceptualizing the bizarre show Turkish politics have performed for the last two years.

These have indeed been confusing, polarizing and intense times. Yet, after all that has been said and done, what is new or unheard of with shady political and militant organizations, men in uniforms dreaming of a comeback to direct power, different classes and elites fighting for the upper hand, saucy theories involving foreign intelligence agencies and doomsday scenarios? The only difference is that this time around the battles have been fought in front of Turkish society and the international media. For the first time, perhaps, the dirtiest elements of the futile dynamics of Turkish politics have been exhibited in public and debated ad nauseam. What we always knew but never spoke and named became spoken and named out loud.

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There are two reasons why age-old diseases became such public sensations. First of all, freedoms of expression and press have come a long way in this country and led to the unprecedented coverage of dark rumors, which would have meant the end of media outlets and journalists just six or eight years ago. Thus, perhaps for the first time in Turkey, the media has become so fragmented and independent that no particular group could claim absolute control over what was to be made public or what kind of interpretation would be the mainstream or official one.

This positive development has led to the second reason. The same inevitable information outpouring has created an imperative for interest groups to manipulate what is being shown on the screen. If one cannot stop the leak, one might as well try to control the flow or spin the reports towards the desired direction. Enigmatic statements by retired officers, allusions and indirect messages from the politicians, off record and quite broad information given by state officials, leaked memos and phone conversations have completely blurred the scene with a cacophony of partial or misinformation.

Different domestic media outlets have continued to cover Ergenekon and AK Party trials and Laicism versus Islam debates through their own political inclinations and what little "special information" has been given to them by their big brothers. Foreign media have read Turkey through their own domestic lenses of integration of Muslim immigrants, EU accession and unknown future of political and militant Islam.

Just like in the Thai one, the Turkish fog of morality has only resulted in mystifying the mundane power games and political pressures. Both domestic and foreign observers have been captivated and fixated with the blurred colors on the screens. Although the scene that has been censured was nothing sexier than what we have always seen, the viewers' sensuality has been aroused by the showing of a tiny bit of political skin - enough to catch our attention but not enough to satisfy our curiosity.

Just as a brief glimpse of a bra in a business meeting can excite a man more than seeing topless beach goers, the limited information we had access to provided enough sensuality for commentators to imagine wild fantasies.

Mundane and boring:

Turkey was becoming Iran. The same people who were concerned about a sneaky shari'a imposition declared Islam and the Turkish nation to be under attack from Western missionaries, who were after a sneaky mass conversion of Turkey into a Christian nation. President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan were ‘exposed' to be Jews, not "Islamists" as they look to be. "Learned" foreign observers foresaw civil war or an imminent military show down, and declared the notion of a Muslim majority democratic country a myth. In the middle of all of this, we have become “children lost in a forest of symbols,” as Baudelaire put it.

The current episode in the unfolding Chronicles of Türkiye is neither the last battle nor the most dramatic twist we have witnessed in the story of our adolescent Republic thus far. When the current fog of morality is lifted, our arousals cool off and we are able to reconstruct what we have not been allowed to see, we might all be quite disappointed with how mundane and boring the blurred scenes actually were.