Washed It!

At Sami Abu Hossein’s cramped bookstore, the hundred or so book titles listed on a wall aren’t bestsellers. They’re banned.

And the cheery Abu Hossein can you get you any of them, sometimes in the few minutes it takes to sit down and drink a cup of thick-brewed Turkish coffee.

“There are three no-nos,” the owner of Al Taliya Books explains with a big smile. “Sex, politics and religion. Unfortunately, that’s all anyone ever wants to read about.”

He laughs uproariously.

“These are all the banned ones,” he says, gesturing to the list taped to the wall above the store entrance, books on sexuality to ones that critically examine the life and times of the prophet Muhammad, the most taboo topic in the Arab world.

“We have them,” he says, grinning broadly, “but don’t tell anyone.”

The tubby father of five seems to get a tremendous kick out of bucking the rules. (Not that they’re strictly enforced; he’s never been arrested or even summoned by the authorities.)

His partner in thought crime is Hossein Yassin, a self-described Marxist in a worn beige linen suit. Abu Hossein summons his wiry 48-year-old comrade in for the really tough jobs.

Yassin jokes that he’s the Special Forces for getting banned or hard-to-find books. He makes allusions to a murky past as an underground revolutionary. He says he calls upon a network that stretches across the Middle East to locate and transport hard-to-find titles.

“I can get any book,” he boasts. “But don’t ask how I get them.”

The most widely requested banned book remains “The Satanic Verses,” the 1988 novel that suggested some parts of the Koran weren’t God’s words and thereby earned its author, Salman Rushdie, a fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the hatred of pious Muslims worldwide.

Other top requests include “23 Years,” by the Iranian scholar Ali Dashti, which questions miracles ascribed to Muhammad in the Koran; and “The Joke in the Arab World,” by the Egyptian writer Khaled Qashtin, a sarcastic view of the Middle East, its rulers and customs.

Abu Hossein’s shop, in the capital’s rambling but lively downtown, also sells nonblacklisted books. His shelves are filled with titles from serious political studies about the Middle East to romance novels and pirated software manuals.

But his shop is known as the place in Amman to get forbidden fruits of knowledge.

Censoring books in the age of the Internet may seem like a quaint idea. Even the government official in charge of restricting them recently announced in a newspaper article that “stopping books from reaching the people is a page we’ve turned.”

The censor, Abdullah Abu Roman, occasionally stops by the bookstore to hobnob with Abu Hossein. So do plainclothes security officials. Abu Hossein serves them his Turkish coffee. They very politely ask him for the copies of the forbidden books. He hands them over. It’s all very civilized.

“Allah maakon,” he bids them farewell. God be with you.

“They are very sensitive to politics and criticism of politicians,” says Abu Hossein, who has been working at his family shop for decades. “But there are some books that are banned arbitrarily. Sometimes a censor will ban a book for a sentence he doesn’t like.”

A thickly bearded man wearing a headdress and flowing white dishdasha walks in. He’s one of the regulars, a Saudi religious scholar named Thaer Balawi who perhaps enjoys the challenge of subjecting his puritanical Salafist beliefs to the scrutiny of critical intellects. “You can’t stop an idea by censoring it,” he says.

“Mamnoueh maqroubieh,” goes the Arabic proverb. All that is forbidden is desired.

Abu Hossein recalls a memoir by a former interior minister that the censors immediately forbade for its sensitive revelations. It became a bestseller. But later, the political sands shifted, and the book was removed from the blacklist. Now it hardly sells.

In walks Raed Toguj, iPod ear buds firmly in place, a Web designer in his 20s with a penchant for philosophy and social theory. Censorship, he says, is a product of political ideology. “What I see as the solution is critical thinking,” he says.

Toguj acknowledges that the Internet has made his task superfluous. Many banned books are already available for download, and those with money can order copies from online bookstores abroad.

But Abu Hossein and his customers insisted that there’s something special about holding a book in your hand, feeling its pages, gabbing with the bookseller and fellow seekers of knowledge, like Carol Kaplanian, a 29-year-old doctoral student writing a thesis on honor killings of women in the Middle East, picking through a pile of books on gender relations.

The afternoon wears on. Abu Hossein keeps serving cups of coffee for his guests, the Salafist, the communist, the feminist and the Web dude with a passion for philosophy. They sift through titles and chat quietly, their murmurs softened by the stacks of books surrounding them.

daragahi@latimes.com
In Jordan, a bookstore devoted to forbidden titles

The first great American autobiographies both appeared in the 19th century, were born of conflict and written by public men — “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass” and “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.”

Since then, what we might call the publishing-industrial complex has turned the reminiscences of our public men and women into a never-ending stream. As former President George W. Bush — barely two years out of office — points out in the acknowledgement of his memoir, “Decision Points,” virtually every member of his extended, very political family has published a bestseller, including his parents’ dogs.

Where does Bush’s account of his astonishingly eventful eight years rank in such company? Probably far higher than many of his detractors expected. As Bush writes in “Decision Points,” he enjoys surprising those who underestimate him. As the title suggests, the former chief executive elected to abandon the usual chronological approach to these volumes (except for a brief, obligatory foray into childhood and school years) in favor of his recollection of his presidency’s key choices and the personal decisions that Bush says prepared him to make them.

Foremost among the latter were his conversion to active Christianity, which he attributes to an after-dinner talk that evangelist Billy Graham gave to the extended Bush family at their Maine compound, and to participation in his male friends’ Crawford, Texas Bible study group. According to Bush, he continued to read the Bible every morning of his presidency — like his daily run, a comforting habit. Bush credits his religious awakening, along with a growing sense of obligation to his wife and daughters, with his other foundational personal choice: the decision to quit drinking after a night of boorish overindulgence in celebration of his Laura’s 40th birthday. It’s a change Bush credits with making possible his subsequent public life.

Leaks and an active publicity campaign of television and radio appearances have made many of the substantial points Bush makes rather familiar. Essentially, “Decision Points” confirms many of the better nonfiction accounts of his presidency published while he was in office, particularly Bob Woodward’s four volumes and Robert Draper’s “Dead Certain.” The Bush White House may not have been given to doubts or its chief executive to indecision, but it did have a penchant for ad hoc deliberation, stubborn persistence in the face of failure — as in Iraq up to the surge — excessive personal loyalty and for being “blind-sided” by events beyond the unforeseeable tragedy of 9/11.

Nearly midway through “Decision Points,” Bush writes that, “History can debate the decisions I made, the policies I chose, and the tools I left behind. But there can be no debate about one fact: After the nightmare of September 11, America went seven and a half years without another successful terrorist attack on our soil. If I had to summarize my most meaningful accomplishment as president in one sentence, that would be it.”

For that reason, Bush is singularly unapologetic and clear about the fact that he personally ordered the torture of key Al Qaeda members, who CIA interrogators were convinced held information of other planned terrorist attacks. (Bush also continues to insist that waterboarding is not torture.) When then-CIA Director George Tenet asked whether he had permission to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, Bush replied, “Damn right.” Bush writes that about 100 “terrorists” were placed in the CIA interrogation program and that about a third “were questioned using enhanced interrogation”; three were waterboarded. All, according to Bush, gave up usable intelligence that thwarted other acts of terrorism. Other reports have contradicted that assertion, but Bush is firm on the point.

Similarly, he writes that his stomach still churns over the fact that he and the rest of the country were misled by faulty intelligence concerning Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but that the nation and world still are better off with the Iraqi dictator deposed. His only real regret, in fact, is that he failed to act more rapidly and decisively when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Many readers will be surprised by Bush’s warm account of his cooperative relationship with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and his disappointment that they were unable to push through comprehensive immigration reform, which both felt was within a vote or two of their grasp. Given the contentious political use Karl Rove and other Bush aides made of abortion, readers also may be interested in the former president’s unfailingly respectful discussion of the abortion-rights advocates with whom he disagrees. (There’s also something amusing about Bush’s account of urging the late Pope John Paul II not to waver in his pro-life convictions.)

Actually, one of the impressions that arises repeatedly in “Decision Points” is how much civility and bi-partisan cooperation matter to Bush. “The death spiral of decency during my time in office, exacerbated by the advent of 24-hour cable news and hyper-partisan political blogs, was deeply disappointing,” he writes.

Looking back on his exit from office, Bush recalls, “I reflected on everything we were facing. Over the past few weeks we had seen the failure of America’s two largest mortgage entities, the bankruptcy of a major investment bank, the sale of another, the nationalization of the world’s largest insurance company, and now the most drastic intervention in the free market since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. At the same time, Russia had invaded and occupied Georgia, Hurricane Ike had hit Texas, and America was fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was one ugly way to end the presidency.”

There’s a great deal in that statement of what this unexpectedly engrossing memoir suggests is the essential George W. Bush — a disarming candor, for example, combined with almost alarming off-handedness about the implications of what’s being said. The man and the president portrayed in these pages is, at the same time, passive and strong; intelligent but not curious; a public person apparently at his best in private; willing to admit shortcomings, but not particularly self-critical; unfailingly civil himself, but happily surrounded by bare-knuckle partisans. There is a kind of pragmatic courage that makes a leader fearless of contradictions. Bush, for his part, seems oblivious to them.

Immediately after the admission that his presidency was coming to an “ugly” end, Bush adds, “I didn’t feel sorry for myself. Self-pity is a pathetic quality in a leader…. As well, I was comforted by my conviction that the Good Lord wouldn’t give a believer a burden he couldn’t handle.”

One suspects that Bush hopes to have the way in which he bore his unexpected burdens compared to the service of another wartime president, Lincoln. “Decision Points” records that, during his eight years in the Oval Office, Bush read 14 books on the first Republican commander-in-chief.

Somehow, though, it isn’t the Great Emancipator who comes to mind at the end of this memoir, but Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

“To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.”

timothy.rutten@latimes.com
Book review: ‘Decision Points’ by George W. Bush

A terrorist attack apparently aimed at two Jewish centers in Chicago was thwarted when two packages the size of bread boxes containing explosives were intercepted in Europe and the Middle East, President Obama and counterterrorism officials announced Friday.

The packages, which had originated from Yemen, were found on cargo planes after a tip from an official in Saudi Arabia. The targets were a synagogue and another Jewish center on the North Side of Chicago, a U.S. official said.

As they launched a terrorism investigation on three continents, authorities said suspicion fell in particular on Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, which has been linked to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day. The explosive material found in the two packages is the same as that used in the failed airliner attack, according to a U.S. official.

Authorities discovered the packages late Thursday in UPS cargo planes that had flown from Yemen to an airport in East Midlands, England; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

An initial examination of the packages found that “they do apparently contain explosive materials,” Obama said in an announcement from the White House on Friday afternoon. Officials said it was still uncertain whether the devices were operational or whether they were to be picked up and activated by someone in Chicago. One official said federal law enforcement authorities believe the latter scenario to be the most likely.

The events “underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism,” the president said. He warned that authorities believe Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based group, “continues to plan attacks against our homeland, our citizens and our friends and allies.”

A federal law enforcement official said the cargo packages resembled the kind of smaller but deadly attacks recently urged by Anwar Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric thought to be living in Yemen. Awlaki sent e-mail to U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan encouraging him to militant activity before the November attacks at Ft. Hood, Texas, in which Hasan is suspected of killing 13 fellow soldiers. The cleric is also suspected of being behind the Christmas Day airliner plot allegedly carried out by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

“He is pushing the less sensational,” the official said, asking not to be identified because the investigation is continuing. “There appears to be a good amount of debate within Al Qaeda, and Al Awlaki is pushing for more hits, but on a smaller scale. He also believes that even when attacks are scrubbed or foiled, they nonetheless are successful if it terrorizes the United States.”

Federal authorities searched cargo planes at airports along the Eastern seaboard on Friday as well as a delivery truck in Brooklyn, N.Y., but found no explosives.

An Emirates Airline passenger jet carrying cargo from Yemen was escorted from the Canadian border to New York City by two military jets, in what U.S. officials described as a precautionary measure. A package aboard the passenger plane appeared similar to those found in England and Dubai, officials said, but was found not be contain explosives.

John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism advisor, said the explosives “were in a form that was designed to try to carry out some type of attack.”

A federal law enforcement official said initial reviews of the two suspicious cargo packages showed that the one found in England apparently contained a printer or ink toner cartridge with “some kind of white powder” and syringes and wires. He said the package uncovered in Dubai apparently contained cellphone components and a timer. He cautioned that both were still being evaluated and that no firm conclusions had been made.

Obama said that Brennan had spoken with the president of Yemen, who had pledged full cooperation in the investigation.

According to officials, the White House called a 1 a.m. meeting Friday to evaluate the cargo package intelligence, which included video participation with Homeland Security officials. They said the White House decided it was “good enough intelligence” to alert allies in Europe to start checking cargo packages coming from Yemen and bound for the U.S.

At 3 a.m., they said, the U.S. ordered every package from Yemen headed for the U.S. to be pulled off planes and inspected.

Homeland Security officials took a series of steps to enhance security, including heightened cargo screening and additional safety measures at U.S. airports. “Passengers should continue to expect an unpredictable mix of security layers that include explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams and pat downs, among others,” Homeland Security officials said.

A Jewish Federation of Greater Chicago spokeswoman said the group was “taking appropriate precautions” and was “advising our local synagogues to do likewise.” One of the targets was a Jewish congregation that meets at a Unitarian church, according to a U.S. official.

Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism in Washington, said Rahm Emanuel has been the focus of some attention on extremist blogs since long before he resigned as White House chief of staff to run for Chicago mayor. Segal said that vitriol on message boards peaked when Obama named Emanuel his top aide in early 2009.

The two incidents highlight a known vulnerability in the air cargo industry, one that has been the subject of extensive discussion between the Transportation Security Administration and the industry for several years.

The federal government has mandated in recent years that all cargo on passenger aircraft be screened, a goal that was achieved only this August. But the issue of parcels aboard cargo-only aircraft has been far more difficult to resolve. As far back as March 2009, the industry warned Congress it would not be able to meet the August deadline that 100% of cargo would be screened.

A TSA official acknowledged Friday that not all cargo inbound from abroad is screened and that the cargo that does get screened is handled differently than passenger luggage, which is subject to X-ray. That means that the two suspicious packages may not have been subject to screening when they were originally loaded in Yemen.

paul.richter@latimes.com

richard.serrano@latimes.com

bbennett@tribune.com

Christi Parsons in the Washington bureau and Times staff writer Ralph Vartabedian in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Explosives found in two U.S.-bound packages, thwarting terrorist attack

Airline passengers can expect ticket prices to be 7% to 18% higher this holiday season than last year, as an economic recovery — however modest — spurs growing demand for air travel.

Travelers can also look forward to more crowded flights: The airlines have added few new planes or routes in the last several years.

“I expect prices to be quite high compared to the last couple years, as demand is strong and supply is weak,” said Rick Seaney, chief executive of the travel website FareCompare.

Already, airlines are packing more passengers per plane, with the nation’s top carriers recording 86.3% of all seats filled in June — the highest rate in 10 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

About 41 million Americans are expected to fly during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, making it one of the busiest travel seasons of the year.

Passengers took advantage of bargains last year, when airlines dropped prices to the lowest levels in decades to entice recession-battered travelers back into the air. But now, travel experts say, demand has begun to pick up, partly a result of pent-up demand and growing optimism about the economy.

“Travel demand for the peak travel days is increasing, driving prices higher as availability diminishes,” said Jack E. Richards, president and chief executive of Pleasant Holidays, a travel agency in Westlake Village.

For example, a nonstop round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to New York departing the day before Thanksgiving and returning the following Sunday was running between $641 and $881 on the major airlines. According to a spokesman for the travel website Expedia, those prices were about 20% higher than last year.

For travelers hoping to relax in the sun, a round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to Cancun, Mexico — departing the Wednesday before Christmas and returning the Monday after — cost about $561 to $939. Those prices were up about 31%, the Expedia spokesman said.

The prices are so high that Marilyn Fils, a frequent traveler from Tarzana, canceled plans to meet her daughter in New York for Christmas.

“I expected somewhat

An argument over sacrificing goats during a Hindu festival triggered a stampede that killed 10 people Sunday in a packed temple in northern India, officials said.

More than 40,000 people, many inebriated, had taken their goats to the Tildiha village temple in Bihar state to offer sacrifice and prayers to the goddess Durga on the last day of the Navratri festival.

As the worshipers lined up before the butcher, a scuffle broke out and some people were trampled, Banka district spokesman Gupdeshwar Kumar said.

“People were vying with each other to get their goats sacrificed first, and they had a verbal duel with the butcher,” Kumar said.

Four women and six men died in the stampede, and 11 were injured, three of them critically, Banka district police director Neelmani said. The injured were being treated in hospitals.

Villager Umesh Kumar, 35, said the temple was so full, “people didn’t have any place to walk around … and there was a commotion when people tried to have their goats sacrificed.”

The district spokesman said some 30,000 goats were sacrificed at the temple Saturday.

The 10-day Navratri festival honors Durga, the Mother Goddess in the Hindu religion.

The village in Banka district is about 120 miles southeast of Bihar’s state capital, Patna.
Fight at goat sacrifice sparks fatal stampede in India

The increasingly contentious Nevada Senate race between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his ultra-conservative Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, took an ugly turn last week when the candidates accused each other of going easy on child molesters — and campaigning isn’t expected to get any more pleasant between now and election day.

“It’s not much fun to live through,” said political scientist David Damore of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s about 95%, if not 100%, negative.”

In a surprise move on Saturday, Angle softened some of her harsh stances on government benefits such as Social Security and unemployment insurance that have led opponents to characterize her as extreme, according to the Associated Press. Her remarks came during an interview before an audience with a conservative radio host in Las Vegas.

While Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 14.4%, and the highest foreclosure rate, Reid and Angle concentrated on ratcheting up the fear factor with their new spots, a sign that the race remains uncomfortably tight. Three polls released in the last week showed Angle with a slight lead over Reid, but within the margin of error.

“I would say that the ramping up of the rhetoric indicates that the internal polling of the candidates shows they have no clue who is winning this race,” said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. As a result, the candidates are scrambling to demonize each other.

“Reid’s goal isn’t to get people to like him,” Herzik said, “it’s to scare people about Sharron Angle. He’s got very high unfavorables and he knows he can’t change that, so what can he do? Make people like Sharron Angle even less, or be afraid of her.”

In a 30-second spot, Angle accused the incumbent of voting to allow taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for convicted child molesters and sex offenders. “What else,” it asks, “could you ever need to know about Harry Reid?”

Her charge is rooted in political maneuvering around the healthcare reform bill that became law this year. Reid voted against an amendment that would have barred the use of federal funds to buy Viagra for sex offenders. Democrats opposed the amendment for procedural reasons. Politifact, a website that evaluates claims in political ads, rated Angle’s charge as “barely true.”

Reid blasted Angle for a vote she cast in 1999 while a member of the Nevada Assembly opposing background checks for people who volunteer with youth and church groups. “Sharron Angle voted to protect the privacy of sex offenders,” says the star of the spot, a Las Vegas family therapist who works with abused kids. A rating for Reid’s ad could not be found on Politifact.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the bill, which passed the Assembly, would create a fund to pay for the screening of volunteers. The newspaper quoted minutes from the discussion in committee, which reflected that Angle was concerned with “the possible invasion of privacy and liability issues included in the bill.”

Angle has been dogged by other issues, as well.

Last month, she seemed to suggest in a town hall meeting that Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Arab population, is operating under Islamic law, which drew a denunciation from the mayor of that city.

An account by the online news site, Mesquite Local News, said that in response to a question about whether “Muslims are taking over the U.S.,” Angle replied: “Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”

On Thursday, the Reno News and Review published an interview with Angle’s one-time pastor, an evangelical Christian, in which he slurred Reid’s Mormon faith, calling it a “cult” and “kooky.” The Rev. John Reed of Sonrise Church in Reno said he was alarmed by Reid’s “allegiance to Salt Lake City,” where the Mormon religion is based.

Angle disavowed Reed’s remarks, but it is unclear what effect they will have on the 11% of Nevada’s voters who are Mormon. Some political observers believe the pastor’s remarks could prompt Mormons, who generally vote Republican, to choose “none of the above,” which is an option on the Nevada ballot.

In the last week, Reid has garnered the endorsements of two prominent Nevada Republicans — the state Senate’s Republican leader Bill Raggio and former First Lady Dema Guinn, whose late husband, Kenny Guinn, was governor from 1999 to 2007.

The two sisters wear Islamic head scarves and say they have no problem with their secular friends and classmates, who don’t. Yet on the streets, in classrooms and along the hallways of apartment buildings in the cramped Fatih district of Istanbul, Deniz and Daria Ker remind them every now and then that they’ll stew in a fiery hell if they don’t cover up.

“We say, ‘If a single strand of hair comes out and a man sees it, you’ll be damned for 40 years,’” says Daria, an 18-year-old high school student, a white head scarf covering her head as she helps her 20-year-old sister work the cash register of a children’s clothing store. “It’s a must in our religion.”

In much of Turkey, observant and secularist Muslims live largely apart, inhabiting different enclaves within big cities like Istanbul and in different regions of the country.

But in Fatih, an ancient district that’s home to about 450,000 people near the center of Turkey’s economic and cultural capital, members of the two main cultural camps are side by side. They interact, sometimes uncomfortably, every day.

For centuries, Istanbul has been a crossroads of East and West, straddling the European and Asian continents on either side of the Bosporus strait. Fatih, a mostly working- and lower-middle-class district on the city’s European side, is a microcosm of contemporary Turkey. As a growing and prosperous Muslim middle class rises to take the helm in Turkey, Fatih’s fate also may be a test for the country’s future, and possibly that of the West as it attempts to integrate Islam into its ethnic and religious landscape.

“Turkey is one country, but there is a polarization,” says Nilufer Narli, a professor of sociology at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, who has studied Fatih since the late 1990s. “The polarization isn’t new, but it has been sharpened within the last few years.”

In Fatih, the observant and secular share new five- to10-story apartment buildings as well as the ancient streets. They shop at the same large chain clothing stores and corner groceries. They bump against one another on crosswalks, stare at the same store displays, negotiate over the price of tomatoes.

Every day, people here grapple with questions that have confounded politicians and social scientists, questions about the meaning of faith and of sovereignty over public spaces.

“The secularists lived with secularists for 150 years. Religious people lived with their own kind for 150 years,” said Etyen Mahcupyan, director of the democratization program at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, an Istanbul think tank. “Now there is a social sphere where they are tangential to each other. They are touching each other.”

Cheap rents and proximity to the center of the city lured migrants from Turkey’s Anatolian interior to Fatih, Istanbul’s oldest neighborhood. Some of the wealthier and more secular residents moved to more exclusive enclaves, but many also remained.

A low-level cultural war between the country’s surging Islamic past and its century-old commitment to secularism unfolds daily on Fatih’s streets. It is a conflict between the “closed,” those families whose women wear the hijab, or head scarf, and publicly abide by a strict interpretation of Islam, and the “open,” the secular Turks who dominated the country politically and economically during the 20th century.

Class resentment fuels the tensions. Cosmopolitan Istanbul residents speak of Fatih as though it were Kandahar, a backwater of extremists huddled together. “Those people live together because they want to live that way,” said one resident of Bebek, an upscale northern suburb of Istanbul.

The subtle struggle plays out in how one presents oneself: in the cut of an outfit, the length of a woman’s skirt, the growth of stubble on a man’s face. It is felt in the duration of a stare at a scantily clad or heavily covered-up woman, or the rumble of an imam’s voice on the mosque loudspeaker as he recites a particularly moralistic passage from the Koran.

Residents say there’s no overt antagonism between the two groups, no violence or clashes on the street. Somehow, they say, they all work, walk and play next to one another, if not always with one another.

But what is unmistakable is a cultural chauvinism that is clearly practiced by the Islamists, one that frightens and angers many secular Turks who are worried that their cultural identity is being worn away.

“There’s no harsh pressure,” Hossein Avnikar, a local official, said of complaints by secular women that they’re constantly asked to cover up. “They say it. But they say it very sweetly.”

The observant speak of masoulieh tabliq, a Muslim’s responsibility to promote the faith, to get the unbelievers to believe and the less-observant to practice their religion more strictly. As Maksut Senocak, a religiously observant 50-year-old builder explained during a tea at one of the local cafes: “Of course they would tell each other what is sin, because our prophet and imams at the mosque are saying that we should.”

The neighborhood can be a cultural minefield, especially for secular women. Mediha Hasakin, 30, an accountant who has lived in Fatih her entire life, said she has begun to cover her shoulders or wear a jacket when she walks in or near certain areas, especially Carsamba, a neighborhood of 50,000 described by many as Istanbul’s most conservative.

“We’re being careful, up on the hill,” she said, gesturing toward the warren of narrow streets where men sport lengthy beards and skull caps, women dress in all-covering Arabian-style black abayas and restaurants remain shuttered in the daytime during the dawn-to-dusk fast of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In old Istanbul quarter, Islamic and secular Turks grope toward coexistence

Pope Benedict XVI arrived Thursday in Britain to an enthusiastic reception by fellow Roman Catholics and promptly warned the country not to let rampant secularism swamp or destroy its Christian roots.

“The United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society,” the pontiff said shortly after landing in Scotland to begin a four-day tour. “May it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms.”

The German-born pope cited the evils of Nazism as an example of the consequences of “atheist extremism.”

His exhortation, delivered at the British royal residence in Edinburgh, launched the first-ever state visit by a pope to this increasingly non-religious nation, which broke with Rome almost half a millennium ago under Henry VIII.

The current occupant of the throne, Queen Elizabeth II, was on hand to welcome the pontiff in a simple meeting Thursday morning that brought together two octogenarians who are both heads of state as well as leaders of their own separate strands of Christianity. The queen is the titular head of the Church of England.

Later, more than 100,000 well-wishers greeted Benedict as he traveled the streets of Edinburgh in his specially designed Popemobile, with his shoulders wrapped in a green Tartan scarf. Scattered protests made hardly a dent in the larger din of cheers and applause.

The pope also led tens of thousands of participants in an open-air Mass in Glasgow early Thursday evening under brilliant blue skies in the same park where his predecessor, John Paul II, met even larger, more rapturous crowds in 1982 on a pastoral visit.

That visit was generally more warmly received than this one, in part because of John Paul’s personal charisma and his status as a heroic crusader against communism. Benedict’s state visit, by contrast, has inspired strong opposition from human-rights activists, scientists, feminists, gay-rights advocates and critics of the Vatican’s response to widespread allegations of child molestation by priests and religious workers.

Speaking to reporters on the flight from Rome, Benedict acknowledged that the church had been too slow to remove abusive clerics and to protect their victims.

“The authority of the church wasn’t sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently quick or decisive,” he said, adding: “How can we repair, what can we do to help these people overcome this trauma, find their lives again and find again the trust in the message of Christ?”

The pope is expected to meet with abuse victims during his visit. They and other critics say that the Vatican has been more concerned with damage limitation and covering up suspected abuse than with seeking justice for those subjected to it.

At his public appearances Thursday, the pontiff sounded one of the principal themes of his papacy and one of the clear goals of his visit to Britain, which is to call Europe back to Christian values and beliefs.

Expanding on his warning about the “aggressive forces of secularism” earlier in the day, Benedict urged attendees at the Mass in Glasgow to fight back against those “who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse … or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty.”

“Religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or sister,” he said. “Society today needs clear voices which propose our right to live, not in a jungle of self-destructive and arbitrary freedoms, but in a society which works for the true welfare of its citizens and offers them guidance and protection.”

In many ways, the pope’s homily was a more diplomatic version of comments that landed one of his aides in trouble on the eve of the British visit. In an interview with a German journal, Cardinal Walter Kasper described Britain as a “Third World country” that is incubating an “aggressive new atheism.”

Kasper’s remarks made front-page headlines here. The Vatican hastily announced that the cardinal, who was scheduled to accompany Benedict to Britain, would not be coming but insisted that his withdrawal was due to ill health rather than the controversy his comments caused.

The pope is due to spend Friday and Saturday in London.

henry.chu@latimes.com
Pope Benedict XVI urges Britain not to let secularism overshadow Christianity

WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vast, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall to help restore traditional American values and honor Martin Luther King’s message. Civil rights leaders who accused the group of hijacking King’s legacy held their own rally and march.

While Beck billed his event as nonpolitical, conservative activists said their show of strength was a clear sign that they can swing elections because much of the country is angry with what many voters call an out-of-touch Washington.

Palin told the tens of thousands who stretched from the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the grass of the Washington Monument that calls to transform the country weren’t enough. “We must restore America and restore her honor,” said the former Alaska governor, echoing the name of the rally, “Restoring Honor.”

Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008 and a potential White House contender in 2012, and Beck repeatedly cited King and made references to the Founding Fathers. Beck put a heavy religious cast on nearly all his remarks, sounding at times like an evangelical preacher.

“Something beyond imagination is happening,” he said. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

Beck exhorted the crowd to “recognize your place to the creator. Realize that he is our king. He is the one who guides and directs our life and protects us.” He asked his audience to pray more. “I ask, not only if you would pray on your knees, but pray on your knees but with your door open for your children to see,” he said.

A group of civil rights activists organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton held a counter rally at a high school, then embarked on a three-mile march to the site of a planned monument honoring King. The site, bordering the Tidal Basin, was not far from the Lincoln Memorial where Beck and the others spoke about two hours earlier.

Sharpton and the several thousand marching with him crossed paths with some of the crowds leaving Beck’s rally. People wearing “Restoring Honor” and tea party T-shirts looked on as Sharpton’s group chanted “reclaim the dream” and “MLK, MLK.” Both sides were generally restrained, although there was some mutual taunting.

One woman from the Beck rally shouted to the Sharpton marchers: “Go to church. Restore America with peace.” Some civil rights marchers chanted “don’t drink the tea” to people leaving Beck’s rally.

Sharpton told his rally it was important to keep King’s dream alive and that despite progress more needs to be done. “Don’t mistake progress for arrival,” he said.

He poked fun at the Beck-organized rally, saying some participants were the same ones who used to call civil rights leaders troublemakers. “The folks who used to criticize us for marching are trying to have a march themselves,” he said. He urged his group to be peaceful and not confrontational. “If people start heckling, smile at them,” Sharpton said.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s delegate to Congress, said she remembers being at King’s march on Washington in 1963. “Glenn Beck’s march will change nothing. But you can’t blame Glenn Beck for his March-on-Washington envy,” she said.

Beck has said he did not intend to choose the King anniversary for his rally but had since decided it was “divine providence.” He portrayed King as an American hero.

Sharpton and other critics have noted that, while Beck has long sprouted anti-government themes, King’s famous march included an appeal to the federal government to do more to protect Americans’ civil rights.

The crowd — organizers had a permit for 300,000 — was a sea of people standing shoulder to shoulder across large expanses of the Mall. The National Park Service stopped doing crowd counts in 1997 after the agency was accused of underestimating numbers for the 1995 Million Man March.

It was not clear how many tea party activists were in the crowd, but the sheer size of the turnout helped demonstrate the size and potential national influence of the movement.

Tea party activism and widespread voter discontent with government already have effected primary elections and could be an important factor in November’s congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative races.

Lisa Horn, 28, an accountant from Houston, said she identifies with the tea party movement, although she said the rally was not about either the tea party or politics. “I think this says that the people are uniting. We know we are not the only ones,” she said. “We feel like we can make a difference.”

Ken Ratliff, 55, of Rochester, N.Y., who served as a Marine in the Vietnam War, said he is moving more in the tea party direction. “There’s got to be a change, man,” he said.

Beck seeks help restoring traditional American values; Sharpton tries to keep King dream alive

For nearly a decade, the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno has held a carnival on the Saturday following the end of Ramadan, during a festival that has been called the Muslim equivalent of Christmas. With pony rides, carnival attractions, games and Middle Eastern food, it’s a popular event for the community’s children.

This year, the center’s leaders had a sense of foreboding when they noticed the date on which the carnival would fall: Sept. 11.

This week, after listening to escalating rhetoric over plans for an Islamic community center within blocks of the destroyed World Trade Center site in New York, the Fresno center canceled the carnival.