[Arb]

Religion and politics

According to historian Kemal Karpat, the movements that perceive Islam as a political movement or particularly the view of Islam as a political religion hold the position that Atatürk was not a Muslim (true believer or religious Muslim). It is normal that this perspective was adapted, Karpat says. "He was not against Islam, but those who are against his political power using the religious arguments[4]." Any movement that wanted to establish the Caliphate had to discredit Atatürk. It is claimed that Republic reflected Kemal's personal philosophy.
“ I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the teachings of science.... Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow man.[33] ”

Many years later, when Turkey had became more secular and modern, he gave a public speech in which he criticized Islam and especially Islamic law as the views of an 'immoral Arab':
“ For nearly five hundred years, these rules and theories of an Arab Shaikh and the interpretations of generations of lazy and good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and criminal law of Turkey. They have decided the form of the Constitution, the details of the lives of each Turk, his food, his hours of rising and sleeping the shape of his clothes, the routine of the midwife who produced his children, what he learned in his schools, his customs, his thoughts-even his most intimate habits. This theology of an immoral Arab [presented as Islam] is a dead thing. Possibly it might have suited tribes in the desert. It is no good for modern, progressive state. God's revelation! There is no God! These are only the chains by which the priests and bad rulers bound the people down. A ruler who needs religion is a weaklings. No weaklings should rule![34] ”

It can be claimed that Atatürk is a "cultural Muslim" or "nominal Muslim," but it should be noted that the definition of cultural Muslim itself is very far from being uncontested[citation needed].

Mustafa Kemal described the religion of Islam as the religion of Arabs in his own work titled Medenî Bilgiler:
“ Even before accepting the religion of the Arabs, the Turks were a great nation. After accepting the religion of the Arabs, this religion, didn't effect to combine the Arabs, the Persians and Egyptians with the Turks to constitute a nation. (This religion) rather, loosened the national nexus of Turkish nation, got national excitement numb. This was very natural. Because the purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag to an including Arab national politics.[35]