While responding to a question on hate speech, the Religious Affairs Directorate said on Monday that Islam does not allow its followers to use such discourse.
A man identified as Mustafa Petek asked the Religious Affairs Directorate on March 24 if Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the Hizmet movement, deserves to be a target of hate speech by state officials. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and several government officials have been targeting Gülen and the movement, calling him a “false prophet,” “fake saint” and “bogus scholar,” and Hizmet a “parallel state,” a “gang,” “cave dwellers,” “tools,” a “virus,” a “tumor,” an “illegal organization” and “raving Hashishin,” which was a medieval order of assassins.
The Religious Affairs Directorate, in response to the man’s query on hate speech, said, “In Islam, no one is allowed to humiliate a person or refer to him using adjectives that don’t represent him.”
Volunteer teachers saddened by efforts to close Turkish schools
Volunteers teachers, most of whom left behind a better life in Turkey with the hope of promoting universal values of peace, dialogue and peaceful coexistence with others through education at Turkish schools abroad, have voiced great disappointment over efforts by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to defame and eventually see these schools close.
Erdoğan calls on US to extradite Gülen in return for jailed US pastor in Turkey
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Turkish Islamic lender Bank Asya has made a cash capital increase on the back of claims that state-owned companies and institutional depositors have withdrawn millions of Turkish Liras of the bank’s total deposits. The lender said it had decided to make a cash capital increase of 33 percent to 1.2 billion liras ($515 million) and was selling an 18 percent stake in retailer Yeni Mağazacılık (A101) for 298 million liras.
Turkish authorities use charges of terrorism to silence free speech
Journalists in Turkey are being charged with “being involved in terrorist activities” and “endangering state security” to justify the current crackdown on the media, as this is the only legitimate way for Turkish leadership to silence and censor dissident voices while shielding themselves from being seen as infringers on the freedom of speech and expression, unambiguously protected under international law.
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Low-flying military jets buzzed over Turkey’s capital of Ankara. Soldiers blocked major bridges in Istanbul. State-run television announced that the military had imposed martial law.
German intelligence did not warn against Hizmet Movement
The BfV, which is in charge of domestic intelligence in Germany, acknowledged that it analyzed certain articles by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. According to the BfV, this analysis was based on their legal prerogative to check the compatibility of certain documents with the free and democratic constitutional order.
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