[lbo-talk] "secular elites"

[Doug Henwood]

Ok, so now Yoshie tells us to dismiss the huge anti-AKP  
demonstrations in Istanbul as representing "secular elitists." I've  
got at least two problems with this.

First, in the Turkish context, the Islamists are in large part drawn  
from the business class. The AKP itself is quite neoliberal and pro- 
American. (It's interesting to see such sympathetic coverage of AKP  
in the New York Times, which is not otherwise known for its sympathy  
to Islamist forces. And it's also interesting that their new  
correspondent in Istanbul, Sabrina Tavernise, collaborated with  
Michael Gordon on some "Iran is smuggling bombs into Iraq" stories.  
For that, YF christened her the "new Judith Miller" <http:// 
mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-December/025854.html>.) So if we're  
talking about economic elites, then the politics of secularism are  
hardly clear - especially since there were many anti-imperialist,  
anti-coup secular forces also involved in the demos. Are we now to  
celebrate religion in itself, and not merely as the sigh of the  
oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world?

But more broadly, I thought "progressives" liked education, and  
believed in spreading more of it around. Education tends - not  
always, but generally - to make people more secular. If the poorer  
masses of Istanbul are anti-secular, does that make being anti- 
secular a good thing? There's a school of thought on the left that  
seems to think that deprivation is ennobling and privilege of any  
kind is corrupting. If that's the case then we should oppose mass  
education. That would fit in nicely with the American right-populist  
tradition, which is contemptuous of book learning as feminizing and  
decadent.

Doug