Jediism

A Jedi Church was spawned from the Star Wars series. The religion received press coverage following an international e-mail campaign in 2001 that urged people to write “Jedi” in response to their religion classificaiton on their country’s census. The majority were assumed to have claimed the faith as a joke, but there was enough of a rise to put Jediism on the map of world religions.

After recently slamming the warped theology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Turkey?s top religious body may have another formidable enemy: The Jedi.

This column has twice borrowed Shelby Foote?s famous line, with a minor revision: ?A Turkish university, these days, is a group of buildings around a library and a small mosque.? That was not a prophecy if one was not too naïve about the Islamist mind.

Thousands of Turkish students have raised their voices in online campaigns to build Jedi and Buddhist temples at their universities, after a series of mosques were constructed on their campuses by rectors who stressed "huge demand."