RISE OF THE SECULAR MODERNISTS 303What was his vision? To break the authority of the ulama in Turkey, un-
seat Islam as the arbiter of social life, and authorize a secular approach to the
management of society. In the Western context, this makes him a "moder-
ate." In the Islamic context, it made him a breathtakingly radical extremist.
First up on his agenda: opening the public sphere to women. Toward
this end, he promulgated new laws that gave women the right to vote, hold
public office, and own property. He had polygamy outlawed, discouraged
dowries, frowned on traditional marriage customs, and sponsored new
rules for divorce based on the Swiss civil code, not the Qur' an and hadith.
He also banned veils and head scarves, part of a new state-sanctioned
dress code that applied to men as well as women-for example, the fez was
banned too. Turbans and beards were strongly discouraged. Derby hats
were okay, though, and so were bowlers, baseball caps, and berets. Atatiirk
himself wore suits and ties and urged his fellow Turks to do the same.
The religious establishment was shocked when ballroom dancing was
introduced as official entertainment at state functions, but there was noth-
ing they could do about it. Atatiirk meant business, and he had the power
and prestige to get it done. His parliament backed him to the hilt when he
proposed a law requiring that public readings of the Qur'an henceforth be
conducted in Turkish, not Arabic-blasphemy to the devout. Parliament
backed him again when he moved the workers' day off from Friday to
Sunday-to Sunday! Atatiirk's government went on to close religious
schools, shut down the Sufi brotherhoods, and abolish the waqfs-those
ancient religion-based charitable foundations-in favor of state-dispensed
social services. In 1925, Atatiirk capped his secular modernist revolution
with a truly jolting declaration: he declared the khalifate dead.
This wasn't actually breaking news, of course. For all practical purposes,
the khalifate had been dead for centuries, but in the world between Istan-
bul and the Indus, the khalifate held a special place in the public imagina-
tion roughly analogous to that of ancient Rome in the West: it embodied
the lingering dream of a universal community. In the West, the ghost of
Rome persisted right to the end ofWorld War I, visible in such traces as
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was really just the final form of "the
Holy Roman Empire," and in the titles of the last German and Russian
rulers before World War !-kaiser and czar were both variations on Caesar.
Rome had been dead for centuries, but the Roman ideal of a universal state