Turkey, as you know, is working toward becoming a member of the European Union. It is also largely a Moslem country. An emerging problem is noted in this article in the socially-conservative news source, The Daily Standard (web version of The Weekly Standard):

... Before the formal accession process could be begun, the European Union required that Turkey make its laws congruent with European standards. Turkey passed 218 laws which reformed its penal code. Among them were laws making marital rape a crime and treating honor killings of adulterous wives as seriously as other cases of intentional murder.

But as we celebrate, it is worth remembering that Turkey almost didn't make it. Through much of the summer and fall there was one big sticking point. Turkey's government wanted to pass a law that would make adultery by either spouse a crime.

Europe was outraged. The E.U. Commissioner for Enlargement, the German Guenter Verheugen, said the proposed law "can only be a joke." He proclaimed that a law banning adultery would suggest that Islamic law was entering Turkish law, and his spokesman said such a proposal was "alien" to the European way and would indicate "a fundamentalist mentality that the state runs your bedroom."

The Standard article, which is written by a UVa professor of politics, goes on to report some statistics about adultery and its effect upon marriage, which is, as you can imagine, negative.

Europe is in no position to lecture anyone about sexuality whether in or out of marriage. It seems incapable of creating families and societies that meet the most rudimentary criterion for good health--reproducing themselves.

BUT WE MAY have here an opening for America. A 1998 survey of 23 nations by the University of California at Irvine's Eric Widmer found the United States more disapproving of adultery than 15 European nations. Eighty percent of Americans said adultery is always wrong. Only Ireland and Northern Ireland seemed as adamant.

So we can tell Turkey and the rest of the Islamic world that we would never wish to rule out of the company of civilized nations a country whose only offense was taking marital vows seriously. We can remind them that the Bible--as well as the Koran--has something to say on the subject. And we can pledge to work together toward creating societies with laws that strengthen families.

So The Standard sides with the Turks on this one. They think it's a good idea to outlaw adultery, which those effete and dissolute Europeans think is so funny. Dutch blogger Jasper Emmering takes the ball:

In other words, they [The Standard] want the freedom to write Holy Verses into law.

It is important to keep this in mind when reading (social) conservatives on Islam. They hate Islam, but they don't really disagree with Islam on a lot of stuff.

They think it's right for society to demand that women dress demurely, even if they think that the hijab is out of line. They believe in abstinence the way Somalians believe in clitoridectomy, it enhances virtue. They think crime ought to be punished harsher, like in the olden days, even though the chopping off of hands is a bit too much for them. And they think government has a right, nay a duty to regulate the bedroom-behavior of consenting adults. They even got their own bunch of terrorists.

Well, that might be going a little far, don't you think? Mmm, but it is something to think about.

These Christian social conservatives would earnestly like to do everything they can to eradicate Islamist terrorism. Everything, that is, except promote liberalism. But, to paraphrase Tony Blair, to do so would require them to be "tough on terrorism, and tough on the causes of terrorism".

The problem is that these Christian social-conservatives share a lot of values with orthodox Muslims, but at the same time Muslim orthodoxy (fundamentalism if you will) is the basis on which the current batch of -mostly Arab- terrorists have built their organisations. They recruit in Mosques and divert money from Muslim charities to fund their cause. Promoting a more liberal Islam would obviously be in the interests of the United States.

The Unitarian-Universalist web site UUWorld has a clear and interesting article describing religious fundamentalism, Moslem and Christian: The Fundamentalist Agenda. This post is long enough already, I won't quote sections from that article, but the reader may find it very informative.

How would the Taliban feel about the new sex education curriculum? An educated guess: they'd want to recall the entire Board of Education.