Vienna - the Austrian capital amazing buildings, impressive museums and delicious schnitzels.Mais outside of it, what I really was for a short visit is the community growing Turkish students who have found not just a good education, but also religious freedom in this far-away land.
In more descriptive words, I came to Vienna to speak at WONDER, a company founded by a group of Turkish students who moved here in Austrian universities.All were either girls who wore the hijab or young graduates of secondary schools of religious Turkey ("" imam-hatip"") .they were all excluded from the "post-modern coup" of the end of the 1990s, in which the ultra-secular generals tightened old lay decades of apartheid the Turquie.En other words, the doors of Turkish universities were simply close to these young conservatives.
Means of the West
In fact, the veiled girls received a choice: they either would take off their scarves and then admitted to universities, or keep and forgetting to education.But some found instead a third way, which the Turkish Generals probably don't expect: the education of the West.
Austria became a destination preferred, because it was closest to the Turquie.Tout and relatively cheaper first, in 2000, only a dozen girls a - some Istanbul, other less cities fantasies of Anatolia. First of all, they were hesitant on "the country of the infidels," and the treatment they would face it. But soon they realized that liberal countries in the "infidels" is more respectful of their faith as the intolerant in their homeland.
"I was concerned about the manner in which the Austrian me would be with my scarf," says Hatice, 25, a first student Turks came to Vienna. "But I faced discrimination."
Instead, she recalled how she was positively surprised when a professor at the University of Vienna he congratulated on the beautiful colour and adjustment of his scarf. "In Turkey, teachers used dédaignés me a bigot," she says. "It was the first time I heard something about how I looked beautiful."
Hatice is now in the program of master's degree in computer science and has ambitious dreams about his future career.But the five years that she spent there are taught his things other than just science. " "In this society live only the way in which they choose and respect differences," she admired."This is a lesson Turkish we need."
I ask him the freedom of non-Muslims in a Muslim country. The missionaries should, for example, have the right to evangelize in Turkey? "Yes," she said. "There are 17 mosques now in Vienna; if we can propagate Islam here, they should be able to spread Christianity it as well."Then it tells me how she convinced her mother more conservative on this issue:
"When the monastery Sümela Trabzon reopened last summer, my mother didn't like it." "But I said its only Muslims we should support the freedom of all for the sake of justice", she says.
Muhammed, 24, another student Turkish in Vienna and is also sensitive to justice. He is a graduate of religious schools denied equal access to Turkish universities.Experience with injustice seems to have given him an egalitarian vision, for now he defends the rights of all groups in society.That is why, he said, he invited me to speak on the Kurdish question. "I want my friends to get the authoritarian State which abolished we have also done the same for the Kurds and Armenians.»
Farm self-criticism
Mohammed is also critical to its own tradition."The Kemalists have certainly been intolerant toward us, he said."But we must admit that we were not tolerant either."It is very critical of the school"imam-hatip"gets his degree, blaming"a dogmatic and oppressive approach."He believes that Muslims must develop a "more individualist culture, based on the examination".do not obey
Really, I've seen the seeds of this culture among these young Muslim Turks to Vienne.WONDER, which they organized thanks to the support of charitable, was in the House for more than 1,200 students, most had processing experiments in this country étranger.Ils are still very religious and enough conservateur.Mais they have become much more liberal spirit than their parents and even more secular Turkish nationalism can reach extreme heights.
This story, I think, is one of the examples of a remarkable phenomenon: the Muslim Turks in the mondialisation.Cela commitment was already evident in economic globalization of our "bourgeoisie" Muslim it was also evident in hundreds of schools that have opened religious followers of black kite/Fgulen Gülen, a popular Muslim leader, throughout the monde.Et it is now also evident in the stories of pious Turkish students who discovered the freedom in universities in Europe or America.
I see this trend as an unexpected consequence of tyrannical secularism of the Turquie.On can, perhaps even see it as a confirmation of an old Islamic word of wisdom: "in every wickedness, there is also some goodness."
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