Sunitus - De instelling van de geest

Nilüfer Göle is professor of sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris and a leading authority on the political movement of today’s educated, urbanized, religious Muslim women.  A prominent Turkish scholar, she is the author of The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling.

Each time I cross the Galata bridge, I never tire of contemplating with wonder the panorama of Istanbul in which emerge, like drawings, the silhouettes of its longilineal minarets. Unlike the Eiffel Tower, the minarets, multiple and discreet, are not erected as symbols of the city of Istanbul. Neverthe less, Istanbul, without its slender minarets, which symbolize the spiritual elevation of man towards God, would lose a part of its soul.