Reading my Turkey Blog, Dr. A.M. Secrest, retired professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina Central University, writes that his perceptions of Muslims are changing. He confesses that he has never known a Muslim before, and like many Americans, has reacted negatively to media images of Islamic fundamentalists and extremists. But he is "favorably impressed" with Muslim Turks as I describe them in my reports:
Sounds as if we Americans, esp. the younger generation, could learn something from the Turks and the Islamic fold, with a secular, tolerant attitude, about manners, respect, generosity and acceptance...It's amazing to me that your students have never met a Christian before, yet accept you and even applaud you...Just as you have much to learn from them, so you have much to teach them about us...
A tolerant Muslim might have a lot to teach Americans. I'm afraid so many Americans are becoming increasingly irreligious, materialistic, and savage.
Indeed. The respect that young Turkish Muslims show toward their parents, teachers and other elders is far greater than what young Americans demonstrate toward their parents, teachers and elders. The innocence of young Muslims, particularly on sexual matters and relations with the opposite sex, is endearing. They seem to experience so much less confusion and angst than do American teens. Far fewer are lost to drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, and spiritual nihilism, it seems to me. Far fewer kids spend hours a day zoned out on the Internet (home computer use is far less common here). They actually play old-fashioned face-to-face games together, or with their parents. Teachers at the school I teach at do not have to worry about being reprimanded if they touch, hug, spank or shout at children. Their authority is rarely questioned.
Turkish Muslim families appear to be more stable and close-knit than American families. The culture here in Kayseri is utterly wholesome. Divorce, affairs, family dissolution, and step-families are far less common than in America. (Granted, we freedom-loving Americans might find arranged marriages stifling and the highly structured family life, with rigid male-female roles, about as comfortable as a strait jacket.)
Bill Cosby, among others, has lamented the coarsening of American society, which we export daily to Turkey and the rest of the world through cable television and the Internet.
Of all things he'd wish for young people, better television is on the list. Cosby said he wishes kids had access to classic writers and their stories on TV, "so that our youth can find themselves being excited about things other than going straight for the genitalia."
Is there any wonder that the Muslim world resents our pollution of the television airwaves and some of the other "freedoms" we bring to the world stage?
