University ban on headscarves in secular Turkey and other issues.

[Robert Sheridan]

Turkey went secular when re-constituted, under Kemal Ataturk, after  
the defeat and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in WWI.  As a  
result, Muslim women students who observe a religious desire or rule  
to cover their heads by wearing headscarves cannot attend university  
in Turkey.  Noah Feldman has an op-ed in today's NYT in which he  
discusses but doesn't offer to provide a solution to this difficulty, at

http://tinyurl.com/38qhlw

He notes that Prime Minister Erdogan's daughter attended university in  
the U.S. for this reason.  Here she may wear the scarf.

I know a Muslim woman who promised God during a difficult childbirth  
that if only things went well she'd always wear the headscarf.  This  
got her fired from her Christmas sales job at a large department store  
chain as well as an appearance on the TV news and an appointment with  
the EEOC.

The proponents of secularism in government anywhere including here  
seem to have unusual difficulty in distinguishing government as  
regulator from government as provider of other services, such as  
funding universities.

I have a friend who retired to Picayune, Mississippi, where Hurricane  
Katrina smote him and his neighbors sorely.  He was out of touch for  
weeks.  No communications, no power.  Local stores were closed.  What  
kept him and his neighbors alive was the local Baptist church, not any  
of the local, state, or federal agencies.  The church set up soup  
kitchens.  This has made me rethink any idea of absolute separation  
between church and state in an ideal world that doesn't exist.  It  
appears to me that, as in other areas, we need to carefully  
distinguish whether the ideal of separation applies to government's  
regulating power or to its support for helping to keep people alive,  
an important value to me.

In wondering why Turkey has difficulty distinguishing between  
secularism in lawmaking and a ban on headscarves in class, I wonder  
what I'm missing, about Turkey and about us.

rs
sfls