Mehmet Görmez, president of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, says Islam was brought to the world to correct the “distortions” of Judaism and Christianity. |
The debate over whether Islam has been hijacked by fundamentalists -- or whether the religion itself preaches the kind of hatred that leads to terrorism -- has been raging since the 9/11/2001 attacks on the United States. Although this issue has not been resolved, one thing is clear: in the Muslim world, the demonization of Jews and Christians is commonplace.
Take Turkey, for example, where anti-Semitism has been exhibited publicly for decades by prominent members of government, the religious establishment and the media. In June this year, the head of the government’s Religious Affairs Directorate -- the “Diyanet” -- joined the chorus.
In a speech he delivered in Gaziantep -- a transcript of which was posted on the Diyanet’s official Twitter account -- Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez announced that Islam was brought to the world by Allah to correct the “distortions” of Judaism and Christianity. At the center of Judaism, he said, was “material, money and wealth.” Christianity, he asserted, took the opposite, albeit equally “wrong,” interpretation of the divine, as it “came up with an understanding that denigrated the world and deemed property and wealth almost forbidden [haram].”
The Diyanet was established in 1924 by the founding government of Turkey, under the Republican People’s Party, after the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate, as a successor to Sheikh ul-Islam, the previous religious-affairs authority. It has many departments, chief among them the High Board of Religious Affairs, whose duties include:
[M]ak[ing] decisions, shar[ing] views and answer[ing] questions on religious matters by taking into consideration the fundamental source texts and methodology, and historical experience of the Islamic religion as well as current demands and needs.
Turkey is not alone in this practice, which brings us back to the question of why “Muslims hate Jews so much.”
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Moshe Sharon, Professor Emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explains that the
basic attitude is that all history is in fact Islamic history...that all major figures of history basically are Muslim − from Adam down to our own time. So, if the Jews or Christians are demanding something and basing it on the fact that there was a king called Solomon or a king called David, or a prophet called Moses or Jesus, they say something which is not true or, in fact, they don’t know that all these figures were basically Muslim figures.
In fact, since the creation of the world there is only one religion and it is the religion of Islam. So, if anybody says ‘Look, there is a place connected with Solomon and that is the place where the Temple of Solomon stood,’ a true Muslim would tell you: ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right. But don’t forget that Solomon was a Muslim and David was a Muslim. And Abraham was a Muslim. And Isaac was a Muslim, and Jesus was a Muslim.’ This is what they mean by the Islamization of history.
Anywhere which was connected with these people or with these prophets who were all Muslims becomes a Muslim territory. And therefore, when Islam was not in that area before Mohammed came to it, it should have been there. By that area, I mean the Middle East or other parts outside of the Middle East which are now Muslim. So any place like this had to be freed, not to be conquered. They had to be liberated. So, Islam appeared in history in the time of Mohammed -- or reappeared in history from their point of view -- as a liberator. And therefore, there is no Islamic occupation. If somebody occupies anything, it will always be somebody else, not the Muslims. So, there is no Islamic occupation. There is only Islamic liberation.
The West must safeguard the religious liberty of both non-Muslims and non-extremist Muslims.
To be effective, however, these policies must include conducting an honest and open discussion of the history and doctrine of Islam, as well as its contemporary iteration, not as a “religion of peace” – which, in Islam, is to occur only after the entire world has accepted Allah as well as Islamic law, Sharia -- but as one of war and terror.
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist and political analyst, is a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
