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Tried for linking headscarf to sex
An eminent 92-year-old Turkish archeologist is to go on trial for inciting religious hatred because she angered Islamist circles with a scientific paper saying the use of headscarves by women dated back to pre-Islamic sexual rites.Muazzez Ilmiye Cig, who devoted her career to studying the Sumerians, the first known urban civilisation (dating from the 4th millennium BC), was to appear in court on November 1 in Istanbul, her editor, Ismet Ogutucu, said. In a book published last year, Cig says the headscarf - a controversial issue in Turkey - was first worn by Sumerian priestesses initiating young people into sex, but without prostituting themselves. A lawyer from the western city of Izmir took offence and filed a complaint against Cig, resulting in a prosecutor charging both her and her publisher with "inciting hatred based on religious differences". If convicted, the two face up to three years in jail. Cig, a staunch defender of mainly Muslim Turkey's strictly secular political system, recently wrote to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's wife, Emine, calling on her to discard her Islamic headscarf and set an example to young people. "She can wear whatever she likes at home, but as the wife of the Prime Minister, she cannot wear a cross or the headscarf," Cig said in an interview this week in the popular daily Vatan. The Islamic-style headscarf is viewed by secular Turks as a symbol of political Islam and is banned by law in public offices and universities. The issue has polarised Turkish society, particularly since Mr Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party swept to power in 2002 with an end to the headscarf ban high on its list of electoral promises - one it has so far been unable to keep. Posted by: tipper 2006-10-19 |
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