Allah & Opium

Squinting skyward last week, Turks looked for the new moon. When they should see it Ramadan would begin, Ramadan the mystic month in which the Koran was revealed to Prophet Mohammed. This year the first glint of the new moon had a special, dread significance. Turks had been ordered by their stern dictator, Mustafa Kemal Pasha who made them drop the veil and the fez (TIME, Feb. 15, 1926 et seg.), that beginning with Ramadan they must no longer call their god by his Arabic name, Allah.

No godly man, Dictator Kemal considers that there? is no reason why Turks should not call Allah by his Turkish name, Tanri. There is no reason except centuries of tradition, no reason except that Turkish imams (priests) all know the Koran by heart in Arabic while few if any have memorized it in Turkish. Strict to the point of cruelty last week was Dictator Kemal's decree that muezzins, calling the faithful to prayer from the top of Turkey's minarets, must shout not the hallowed "Allah Akbar!" (Arabic for "God is Great!") but the unfamiliar words "Tanri Ulndur!" which mean the same thing in Turkish.

When imams threatened to suspend services in the mosques and hide the prayer rugs, the Government announced that it was holding 400 brand-new prayer rugs in reserve, threatened to produce "newly trained muezzins who know the Koran in Turkish and are ready to jump into the breach."

While the old muezzins pondered this threat, Dictator Kemal, feeling his progressive oats, decreed that three recently closed narcotics factories in Istanbul shall never be reopened, decreed further that Turkish farmers must sharply reduce their famed crops of opium poppies. "Thus we accomplish," read a Cabinet manifesto, "our most modern and most civilized duty toward the Turkish nation and humanity."

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."

During Ramadan all Moslems are especially irritable because they eat nothing during the hours of daylight. After the fasting is over Turks will be more tractable, may accept from their Dictator a new name for their God.

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