Turkish Students Demand Jedi Temples On Campus

[drunkenshoe]

This happened recently. I thought you guys would like it. It's also about Buddhist Temples.

Every line in the petition also starts with "I can’t fulfill my religious needs because the <insert temple here> is <insert number here> kilometres away, because this started after a group of muslim students claimed that they waste time when they go to praying in a mosque 20 mins -30 mins away from the campus, so they want a mescit (small mosque for daily prayers) on the grounds. With AKP they started to build them at a lot of places, but before that it wasn't really better,  because then it was prohibited to build them. No moderation here.

http://www.newsweek.com/thousands-turkish-students-demand-jedi-and-buddhist-temples-campus-320413

Thousands of students across Turkey have demanded that their universities build Jedi and Buddhist temples on campus, in response to a surge in mosques being built for Muslim students.

The demands were sparked last month, when the rector of Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ), announced that “a landmark mosque”, would be built on campus due to “huge demand”, making it the first mosque to be built on the university site.

In response, more than 25,000 people signed an online petition demanding that a Buddhist temples be built as well, in order to cater for the university’s Buddhists.

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“I can’t fulfill my religious needs because the closest Buddhist temple is 2,000 kilometres away, and I can’t go there during lunch break,” a petitioner named Utku Gürçağ Borataç said on the website.

According to Turkish online newspaper, Hurriyet, a number of students at Dokuz Eylül University in the western province of Izmir have demanded a Jedi temple be built on their campus.

A petition on Change.org, illustrated with a screenshot from the film Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones, had received over 5,000 signatures at the time of writing. “To recruit new Jedi and to bring balance to the Force, we want a Jedi temple,” the petition read, in reference to the Jedi knights from the popular Star Wars films.

Ever since they won power in 2002, the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have been accused by secular opponents of attempting to overhaul Turkey’s education system by making it more Islamic.

Turkey’s government-controlled religious authority, the Diyanet, announced last year that mosques were being built on campuses at more than 80 universities, and a scheme is underway to convert one Istanbul university into a centre for Islamic learning.

Last December, a government-backed education council recommended extending compulsory religious classes to all primary school pupils, as well as adding an extra hour of obligatory religious classes for all high school students.

The secularist opposition in Turkey has long accused the AKP of trying to instill conservative Islamic values into everyday life. In March 2008 Turkey’s Constitutional Court narrowly rejected a petition by the chief prosecutor to ban the AKP for allegedly seeking to establish an Islamic state.

According to data from last year, 99.8% of Turkey’s population of 81.6 million people are Muslim (mostly Sunni), and the remainder are mostly 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews).

[Hydra009]

So, let me get this straight.  At this university, in this extremely heavily Muslim country, there isn't a mosque within 20 minutes of campus, however far that is.  (minutes tends to be an imprecise unit of distance)  So to accommodate muslim students, they're building one on campus.  After all, public universities are supposed to be secular grounds.  And other students are understandingly upset with this proposal, so they propose having a Buddhist temple and Jedi temple, too.

My main issue with this is that according to Google maps, there are mosques all over the place, as one would expect in a heavily Muslim country, and quite a few just outside campus.  Unless there's one hell of a traffic jam, this is not an actual problem.  Rather, it seems like part of an ongoing political struggle between Turkey's secularists and Islamists.

[drunkenshoe]

Rather, it seems like part of an ongoing political struggle between Turkey's secularists and Islamists.

Exactly. Religious always plays the victim. Familiar?

Though I don't like most of the secularists either, Hydra. There is one left. That's the Kurdish party. And this time they have a chance to get into the parliament. Hopefully, fingers crossed. 

[Munch]

Religion should be left are the door of any university, uni itself is a place of education and enlightenment, and should not be interrupted by religion -_-

If there ever was a place where people could learn what religion actually is, it should be there.

[stromboli]

Religion should be left are the door of any university, uni itself is a place of education and enlightenment, and should not be interrupted by religion -_-

If there ever was a place where people could learn what religion actually is, it should be there.

Exactly right. And exactly why religions seek to be a presence on university and college grounds, to influence people at that stage of their lives.

[Munch]

Exactly right. And exactly why religions seek to be a presence on university and college grounds, to influence people at that stage of their lives.

Religion is, more then anything else, started at home, children born into families that are. There are often many cases of people turning to religion, like a different one from the one they follow, later in life, but overall the seed is usually planted from home. This is why I feel no place of higher education should give religion as practice in college or uni grounds. Teaching and religion in context to history is okay, since, sadly, it is part of history and the influence of actions both in the past and today.

But I strongly feel religion should be kept out of grounds. Its like if my belief is that every man on campus must experience gay sex and have a class for that, that would be given the red flag before even being put to paper. However if i want to learn about fun bondage techniques, there are plenty of places to learn that elsewhere.

Uni and college should only be about learning about all the practical skills and need to succeed in life, for career and other such things. If religous groups want to become "indoctrinated".. oh sorry, 'learn' about there faith, their are institutions.. sorry, "places of worship" they can go to and have old farts.. oh sorry, "pedophiles", read bedtime stories to them.

Anyone on this forum who is anti theist, should it be their right to gather a group in uni to stand against religious groups and their dogma? Again, this stuff with all things religous or atheist needs to be kept outside of educational institutions, unless they are places specifically made for that purpose, like religious schools.

[stromboli]

Exactly. Religious always plays the victim. Familiar?

Though I don't like most of the secularists either, Hydra. There is one left. That's the Kurdish party. And this time they have a chance to get into the parliament. Hopefully, fingers crossed. 

I hope. I have nothing but respect for the Kurds. A tough, smart bunch of people.