39 - The reformer says:

"The modern, imitative lady wants to go around naked like a Christian girl. She wants to flirt with the man she wishes. She wants to go wherever she wants whenever she wants. She is unaware that she is tearing up her faith, morality and customs. She looks at the veiled Muslim women hatefully and mockingly. Even she swears at them. A youngster meets a girl by chance near a bridge, in market place, at a place of entertainment, in a gathering at the neighbor's, on a passenger boat or in school, and they come to an agreement and get married. Yet they do not know that such a marriage will bring forth a terrible immorality in the future.

"In every corner of the world, there is a different understanding of woman's chastity. In Islam, woman's chastity begins with veiling. The religion has clearly pointed out to whom of the relatives Muslim woman will show herself and whom she will not. The woman is chaste as long as she follows it. At the minute this chastity slackens, moral corruption commences. Today, the man goes out with his insufficiently dressed wife. The husband and wife look for their different pleasures in others. The man goes to taverns, to gambling-dens and to brothels. He does not hesitate to commit every sort of immorality. The moral corruption in women is caused by their husbands. I know a university student married a prostitute. A woman who has dirty memories in her mind cannot be a chaste wife. A married man whom I know goes to family gatherings with his wife. His wife went to bed with a father and he with a young mother. One day, I saw four of them together. Another progressive married a woman who was also a progressive. He had his wife show herself naked to his friends. When the man was not at home, his wife accepted male guests. Eventually, she fell in love with one of them. She got divorced from her husband and the home was ruined. And, a month later, she loved another.

"school is a place of education, a home of virtue. Yet, let me say with regret that even the most decent children lose their decency there. The child learns loathsome words and evil habits in school. It spreads the dirty things it learns in school or outside even to their houses. They do not hesitate to say that they dislike the religious, moral behaviors of their family.

"Our women's addiction to music and to instruments has become a calamity. They listen to the tunes of avaricious, lazy, drunken people whose hearts burn with the deprivation of the pleasures in their imaginations, tunes that do not arouse emotion in the spirit but stir only the basest bestial emotions such as dancing and embracing one another. Pay attention to the songs listened to on the radio also. All they are the entreaties and adventures of the voluptuous persons who flutter with the desire of embracing one another. The meanings of the sounds of radio coming out from the houses, reveal that the virtues of religion, morals, modesty and embarrassment in the families gradually fade away. When the jazz band starts, all the beings move with a magic wire to which the souls are fastened. With their heads, hands and with every part of their bodies, they proclaim their love to one another. Sometimes eight or ten or even fifteen men tack themselves on to a woman, and I compare them to cats and dogs which follow their female in groups, and oppress it. While the man is able to think that the dishonesty which he perpetrates against a stranger woman will be done to his own mother, sister or mate, he still does it. Now I ask, what is this if it is not because of the absence of the feeling of chastity in him? Since religious and moral feelings continue in villages, fornication and dissipation are very seldom."

Though there are admonitory facts worth attention about women in the religion reformer's long writing above, he does not put forth any solution for this complicated problem. These social diseases have been reported from a reasonable point of view as they are seen, yet he considers European women superior to Muslim women in Istanbul and does not say that it is bad for Europeans to dress immodestly. In fact, he wants the youth of Istanbul to be educated like them. About the excessive honesty of our women in villages, he means that it may corrupt soon because it is not based on principles pertaining to knowledge. In the lines he grievously tells about the immoralities among the learned and progressive women in Istanbul contemporary with him, it is not understood what knowledge he wants to be taught in order to protect them against evils.

Everybody, learned or ignorant, knows that honesty and chastity are very precious and praiseworthy qualities. But many people do not act in accordance with this knowledge of theirs. The religion reformer is not right in his thought that, though there is much honesty in villages, the idea of honesty is weak. When the customs and beliefs that have settled unconsciously and unknowingly become sacred traditions, they are more dependable than thoughts and theories based on intellect and knowledge. Moreover, it is unfair to assume that fear of Allahu ta'ala and the feeling of honesty and chastity based on such strong fundamentals as religion and morals are deprived of fundamental knowledge.