The liberal are the secular are the conservative are the militant?

As an Indian- or rather as one brought up in the Indian-NCERT-classes1to12-govt.orpublicschool education system, one is very used to the idea of a liberal ethos being a secular ethos and vice versa. The constitution has conferred the right to practice one's own religion as a fundamental right in any case.

Which is why, Turkey makes an interesting counter-point. A secular individual (though through conventional nomenclature still labeled liberal) is actually a conservative in the the current political environment and an Islamist (yes, that complex moniker- usually branded conservative and sometimes automatically even fanatic- though in it's literal meaning, simply devout-even saintly) is actually a liberal. Funnily enough the entire tumult is around a minor piece of cloth though the socio-political landscape contributes a fair bit.
Turkey banned the wearing of Muslim headscarves in its universities a fair bit ago. The fact that this ban could in fact be made follows from a political history where Kemal Ataturk's legacy is strong as the father of the nation and the army as well as large sections of the educated middle and upper classes cling to his ideals today.
In a book titled "Snow" by Orhan Pamuk, a theater actor leads a coup in a small town cut off from the rest of the country by heavy snowfall. In the midst of a performance, they fire at the audience with actual bullets and then take over the town to make their point. And what is their point? That wearing head-scarves or the donning of other obviously religious symbols is a primitive idea, takes away from the development of a nation and is not in sync with the secular ideals of Kemal Ataturk. The book deals largely with the internal conflict of a poet torn between his leftist atheist militant secular ideals from his youth and the abhorrence for a society where freedom (of dress, speech, belief in god) is curbed with militant suppression.
Turkey's democracy has yielded now an Islamist prime minister (and funnily enough it is a largely Muslim country!!) who has managed to (at least constitutionally) re-permit religious headscarves in universities. Interestingly enough, this has resulted in large scale protests, many university heads saying they will not comply, etc.
The current issue of the Economist carries an article: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10701684

So one question that begs itself is: Is secularism freedom of religion or freedom from religion? And while many intellectuals in my country may be outraged by the latter definition, it is a widely accepted interpretation.

The other question that arises is of course, why is there a debate at all? For instance, Ataturk's idea was not one of banning religion, but merely of having what he thought was "modern law" and "modern ideas" to replace many antiquated traditions- in order to achieve among other things a bigger role for women in society. In fact while he seems to have made his opinion on men's headgear pretty clear (asking men to don the western hat instead of the fez which he thought primitive), he didn't object to headscarves.
The problem seems to lie in the fact secularism needs to be bound in a religious community. Or, religious freedom needs to be bound in a secular society. And think about is- both things are essentially the same- in fact in my head I can see them as a Venn diagram. Tough cookie? Yup.
This is going back to the debate about a Uniform Civil Code in India (which is a debate in existence since independence and incidentally had an ardent supporter in the form of the father of our constitution); the debate over a secular constitution, but based on the Sharia-in Egypt and the Catholic conservatives and the debate over abortion, contraception and euthanasia.
The economist's current issue covers this as well at: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10696111
As a liberal, the problem seems to arise in two occasions:
- When one persons religious freedom (like his being governed under his religious law) confers on him certain rights and immunities which are either greater than another person's or impinge on another person's.
- Or, when one community's religious freedom permits practices which are in another person's view, in violation of the human rights or persons in that community.
Since the job of a state (at least by popular conception) is to preserve the individual rights of all, we are doomed to a perpetual debate, though an evolving one- based on the realities of the then prevailing world.