Turkey's new constitution

[Thirdfain]

I had a Turkish student this summer. His take on this whole matter? "The Islamists will always win elections because an Islamist family raises their women with a minimum of education besides the Koran, and they get married and start having kids as soon as they are 20. Secularists send their daughters to school, and they don't get married until they are older."

The secularists are getting bred out demographically?

[Bakustra]

For an Islamist party seeking to replace the much-beloved, often military-controlled Turkey American conservatives have known with a hellishly democratic state, it sure seems odd that AK isn't calling for anything more radical than allowing women to wear headscarves in public universities. No calling for the banning of alcohol, nothing in their official platform about institution of Shari'a.

Instead, they support affirmative action towards the education of women, support increasing their inclusion in the workforce... You'd think that they wouldn't support these things if they were secretly trying to destroy secularism in Turkey and establish a Dark Age, wouldn't you?

[D.Turtle]

I had a Turkish student this summer. His take on this whole matter? "The Islamists will always win elections because an Islamist family raises their women with a minimum of education besides the Koran, and they get married and start having kids as soon as they are 20. Secularists send their daughters to school, and they don't get married until they are older."

The secularists are getting bred out demographically?

There is a very simple response to this type of argument: Not so long ago pretty much everyone was christian/islamist/whatever. How come there are now secularists?

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I had a Turkish student this summer. His take on this whole matter? "The Islamists will always win elections because an Islamist family raises their women with a minimum of education besides the Koran, and they get married and start having kids as soon as they are 20. Secularists send their daughters to school, and they don't get married until they are older."

The secularists are getting bred out demographically?

That... doesn't make a lot of sense, and as Bakustra said, it doesn't line up with AK's policies. But I can easily see why a Turkish student would think that. If there's anyone more afraid of the AK than fat American Conservatives, it's hardcore Kemalist Turks. The partisan divide in Turkey can be very, very wide.

[Simon_Jester]

How is Iran not moderate as far as Islamic nations go? They aren't the Taliban. They are simply a modern incarnation of Islam, not a particularly radical form of Wahhabism.

They have Sanctity Police or whatever you want to call them. There are quite a few indisputably Muslim nations which don't have any such thing- Islamic cultural/legal mores may be governing the society, but you're not going to get beaten with clubs for failing to live in accordance with a very strict version of the religion.

Even if we compare Iran to Muslim nations of the past, we find that Iran is more strict than many of the great states of the Muslim World's history. The clergy's power over the state is uncontested, which even if you look at all Muslim nations since the founding of the religion is unusual, since there are usually non-ulama leaders in a Muslim nation. Their interpretation is more strict- none of the syncretism and much less tolerance of offshoots of the Muslim faith that you might find in other times and places. Dress codes are enforced more strictly because they are now symbolic of Iran's determination to remain a pious Muslim state rather than merely being normal clothing. And so forth.

I had a Turkish student this summer. His take on this whole matter? "The Islamists will always win elections because an Islamist family raises their women with a minimum of education besides the Koran, and they get married and start having kids as soon as they are 20. Secularists send their daughters to school, and they don't get married until they are older."

The secularists are getting bred out demographically?

I'm not sure this pattern will hold reliably; we could say the same thing about evangelical fundamentalists in the US, and yet they are not a significantly growing sector of the population.

There is a very simple response to this type of argument: Not so long ago pretty much everyone was christian/islamist/whatever. How come there are now secularists?

As I understand it, a few centuries ago there were practically no "Islamists" in the modern sense of the word. Islamic fundamentalism has become significantly more strict over the past few centuries because it has cast itself, in the Muslim world, the antithesis to Westernization and "modernization." So it rejects all things which it deems to be innovation and attempts to present itself as a 'purified' Islam, only much of this 'purity' is an invention of recent centuries rather than actually being the way Muslims practiced their religion 1200 years ago during the height of the Abbasid Caliphate, or 1350 years ago during the height of their great expansion.

"Islamism" is a Western name for a cultural trend saying "we can become stronger and repel all this humiliating dependence on and vulnerability to foreigners by becoming really really hardcore Muslim, like normal Muslim with the knobs cranked up to eleven." It's an ideology that cannot exist without a chip on its shoulder, without something to prove, and the Muslim world didn't feel it had much to prove until the age of imperialism.

[K. A. Pital]

Yup, I think Iran did radicalize. Point taken.

[D.Turtle]

As I understand it, a few centuries ago there were practically no "Islamists" in the modern sense of the word. Islamic fundamentalism has become significantly more strict over the past few centuries because it has cast itself, in the Muslim world, the antithesis to Westernization and "modernization." So it rejects all things which it deems to be innovation and attempts to present itself as a 'purified' Islam, only much of this 'purity' is an invention of recent centuries rather than actually being the way Muslims practiced their religion 1200 years ago during the height of the Abbasid Caliphate, or 1350 years ago during the height of their great expansion.

"Islamism" is a Western name for a cultural trend saying "we can become stronger and repel all this humiliating dependence on and vulnerability to foreigners by becoming really really hardcore Muslim, like normal Muslim with the knobs cranked up to eleven." It's an ideology that cannot exist without a chip on its shoulder, without something to prove, and the Muslim world didn't feel it had much to prove until the age of imperialism.

All of this might be true, but completely misses the point.

Name an ideology that defeated and wiped out another ideology by having its adherents outbreed the competition.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I think you can make a case that this, coupled with the spread of virgin-field epidemics, spread the "ideology" of the European/Christian/proto-capitalist/proto-"Western" people in the Americas. The number of natives directly killed by whites was substantial, but not all that large compared to the pre-Columbian native population; what really decided the ongoing conquest and absorption of native societies by Europeans was population demographics.

Once you get past the 1500s and the conquistadors in Mesoamerica and Peru, you find a fairly consistent pattern. At the points of conflict, during the times of conflict, Europeans were thicker on the ground- or there was someplace nearby where plenty more Europeans were ready to move into the contested area. Higher-density agriculture in European society, plus the constant outbreaks of disease among the natives, kept this pattern in place. Europeans had little trouble shoving aside the natives whenever they felt the desire to do so, and you could argue that this is because they outbred the natives (partly).

Whether or not you call the whole thing an ideological conflict, rather than a racial or demographic one, is up to you.


But yes, I admit that my comment on the history of "Islamism" was a tangent, not directly relevant to your attempt to refute the idea that fundamentalists in Turkey would outbreed secularists. In general it is very hard, if not impossible, for an ideology to outbreed another ideology, because people change their minds more easily than they raise children.

[Stark]

And here I was thinking you'd just invented your own pet definition for a derogatory term thrown around by culture warriors.

[Simon_Jester]

It's a derogatory term that means something- a term for politically active fundamentalist Islam, one which is applied unthinkingly to all forms of Islamic fundamentalism, including forms which would declare each other anathema.

So when culture warriors start talking about "Islamists" or "Islamism," those are nouns with a meaning that can be talked about intelligently, even if I don't normally initiate use of the word because it's so easy for its use to become misleading.

I'm not going to pretend a word doesn't mean anything just because it's a bad choice of words.

[Scorpion]

(...)The number of natives directly killed by whites was substantial, but not all that large compared to the pre-Columbian native population; what really decided the ongoing conquest and absorption of native societies by Europeans was population demographics.

(...)At the points of conflict, during the times of conflict, Europeans were thicker on the ground- or there was someplace nearby where plenty more Europeans were ready to move into the contested area. Higher-density agriculture in European society, plus the constant outbreaks of disease among the natives, kept this pattern in place. Europeans had little trouble shoving aside the natives whenever they felt the desire to do so, and you could argue that this is because they outbred the natives (partly).

First of all, I think you severely underplay the role of those nasty European germs we carried to the New World. In his fantastic book "Guns, Germs and Steel", Jared Diamond mentions how in North America European diseases acted like an advanced guard, devastating native population before the white settlers arrived, even mentioning the case of white settlers coming to the banks of the Mississipi (IIRC) and finding ghost towns (well, ghost camps) where the natives appeared to simply drop everything and go... Surelly the same thing happened in South America...

Second, while European settlers certainly outbred the native americans, this was due to an obvious technological advancement instead of purely ideological differences, so I don't think the analogy applies...

[Kanastrous]

Name an ideology that defeated and wiped out another ideology by having its adherents outbreed the competition.

Haredi Jews in Israel seem to qualify (if well-on-the-way-to-wiping-out qualifies). Their destructive influence upon Israeli policy seems to be underpinned by their constantly-expanding numbers and the ballot-box clout granted by large numbers. Although the only percentage I found (+/- 27%) describes 'orthodox' practitioners and I'm not sure what part of that can be described as true 'Haredi,' that seems like the numbers to make up a darned influential bloc. And that influence is damned baneful.

[Simon_Jester]

(...)The number of natives directly killed by whites was substantial, but not all that large compared to the pre-Columbian native population; what really decided the ongoing conquest and absorption of native societies by Europeans was population demographics.

(...)At the points of conflict, during the times of conflict, Europeans were thicker on the ground- or there was someplace nearby where plenty more Europeans were ready to move into the contested area. Higher-density agriculture in European society, plus the constant outbreaks of disease among the natives, kept this pattern in place. Europeans had little trouble shoving aside the natives whenever they felt the desire to do so, and you could argue that this is because they outbred the natives (partly).

First of all, I think you severely underplay the role of those nasty European germs we carried to the New World. In his fantastic book "Guns, Germs and Steel..."

I read it.

Please try to understand that my argument is based on demographics at the point of contact, and that I'm including things like what happened to the Plains Indians in the 1800s as well as what happened to the Mississippi Valley and Mesoamerica in the 1500s. At the line of contact between European settlers and native societies, where the two were coming into direct conflict, differentials in population density and expansion pressures played a big role in what happened.

Second, while European settlers certainly outbred the native americans, this was due to an obvious technological advancement instead of purely ideological differences, so I don't think the analogy applies...

It was all I could think of- again, my point being that it is possible for a demographic split to be resolved by differential breeding rates... but this is rare, and doubly rare in modern history. Which is why Idiocracy is bullshit.

[Samuel]

The premise of Farewell to Alms is that there was a differential breeding rate between the upper class and lower class in England and that upper class values were the key. Downward mobility caused the upper class to replace members of the lower class with their members and they slowly replaced the lower class because their values gave them a higher chance of surviving.

Note- I haven't read this book. This is the summary I got from someone who did read it and was a student of the professor who wrote it.

[D.Turtle]

It was all I could think of- again, my point being that it is possible for a demographic split to be resolved by differential breeding rates... but this is rare, and doubly rare in modern history. Which is why Idiocracy is bullshit.

Just wanted to note that I think you adequately addressed my point, and I think the above quote is a very fair statement in that regards that I would support.