Rejection of religion in the Middle East

[lpetrich]

Turkish students increasingly resisting religion, study suggests | Turkey | The Guardian - "Young people likely to challenge Islam and see themselves as less religious than previous generations"

Twenty-two-year old Esra, from Mersin, is even more bored than usual this Ramadan. Universities are shut and Turkey has taken the unusual step of placing under-20s, as well as over-65s, under a curfew, because many Turkish families live in intergenerational households.

As a result, Esra can’t see any of her friends. And a few days into the Muslim month of fasting, like many young people, she is now feeling even more suffocated by the religious restrictions imposed by her pious parents.

“They normally don’t know how I dress when I’m not there but even in the house now wearing tight jeans bothers them and they’re commenting on it,” she said. “They think I am fasting but I’m not. I have water in my room.”

...
Yet a study by Sakarya university and the ministry of education from earlier this year looking at religious curricula in Turkey’s school system found that students are “resisting compulsory religion lessons, the government’s ‘religious generation’ project and the concept of religion altogether”.

Almost half of the teachers interviewed said their students were increasingly likely to describe themselves as atheists, deists or feminists, and challenge the interpretation of Islam being taught at school.

...
The shift away from religion among Turkey’s younger generation follows a trend seen in many industralised countries. But some wonder if it is also a backlash to almost two decades of the AKP’s pushy brand of political Islam.

 

[lpetrich]

Richard Dawkins to give away copies of The God Delusion in Islamic countries | Religion | The Guardian

Richard Dawkins is responding to what he called the “stirring towards atheism” in some Islamic countries with a programme to make free downloads of his books available in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Indonesian.

The scientist and atheist said he was “greatly encouraged” to learn that the unofficial Arabic pdf of the book had been downloaded 13m times. Dawkins writes in The God Delusion about his wish that the “open-minded people” who read it will “break free of the vice of religion altogether”. It has sold 3.3m copies worldwide since it was published in 2006 – far fewer than the number of Arabic copies that Dawkins believes to have been downloaded illegally.

13 million downloads - more than its 3.3 million sales.

Translations Project | Richard Dawkins Foundation - some of his books in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and Indonesian. What's been translated so far:

• River out of Eden - A, U, F, I
• The Blind Watchmaker - A, U, F, I
• The God Delusion - A, U, F, I
• The Greatest Show on Earth - F, I
• The Magic of Reality - U, F

I reverse-engineered the translations with Google Translate. "The Blind Watchmaker" and "The Magic of Reality" were successfully reverse-translated, but all the others were rather screwy.

• River out of Eden - A The river coming out of Aden - U The river that flows from Aden - F A meal from Aden - I River of Eden
• The God Delusion - A The Illusion of God - U Deception of God - F The illusion of God - I Delusions of God
• The Greatest Show on Earth - F The most magnificent show on earth - I Most Great Show on Earth, The Greatest Performance on Earth

 

[Tammuz]

Hopefully secularization will ease, or even end, many of the conflicts in the region.