Word: kemalized
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...hard father to his people, Mustafa Kemal told his Turks last December that they must forget God in the Arabic language (Allah), learn Him in Turkish (Tanri). Admitting the delicacy of renaming a 1300-year-old god, Kemal gave the muezzins a time allowance to learn the Koran in Turkish. Last week in pious Brusa, the "green* city," a muezzin halloed "Tanri Ulndur" from one of the minarets whence Brusans had heard "Allah Akbar" since the 14th Century. Raging at Kemal Pasha's god, they mobbed the muezzin, mobbed the police who came to save...
Quick to defend his new word for God, quicker to show new Turkey the fate of the oldfashioned, Kemal the Ghazi, "the Victorious One," pounced on Brusa, had 60 of the faithful arrested, ousted the Mufti (ecclesiastical judge) of the Ouglubjami mosque and decreed that henceforth God was Tanri...
Westerners, whose religious wars lie centuries behind them, could not easily understand how Turks felt last week. Kemal's ventilation had swept away the Turk's fez, his extra wives, his remaining wife's veil, and now his church service. Last week, for the first time in history, Turks of Istanbul, where the reform was inaugurated, understood what the priests were saying. But they found it hard to believe it was the same thing as the Arabic gibberish that had had 13 centuries of mumbo-jumbo behind...
Nearer & nearer crept the moon to crescent. Ramadan was almost upon Turkey when officials of the Department of Culture (which includes religion) screwed up their courage and told Dictator Kemal that he simply could not change the name of Turkey's god-at least not last week. Already several muezzins had been thrown into jail for announcing that they would continue to shout "Allah Akbar!" The populace was getting ugly, obviously sympathized with the Allah-shouters...
Abruptly Dictator Kemal yielded. "Let them pray as they please, temporarily," he growled. Beaming, his Minister rushed off to proclaim the glad respite only a few hours before the new moon appeared. "On account of the general unpreparedness of the muezzins and imams," they suavely declared, "prayers may be offered and the Koran recited in Arabic during the present month of Ramadan, but discourse by the imams must be in Turkish...