Turkey Rejects “Moderate Islam”
meforum.org/turkey-rejects-moderate-islam
November 30, 2017
Like American white supremacist Richard B. Spencer, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan maintains that there is no distinction between “radical” and “moderate” Muslims.
At a November 9 conference on women’s entrepreneurship in Ankara hosted by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejected the concept of “moderate Islam.” Referring to the vow by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh on Oct. 25 to turn his country into a bastion of “moderate Islam,” Erdoğan said, “Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate.’ Islam can only be one thing.” He also claimed that the “patent of this concept originated in the West,” which “really want[s] to weaken Islam.”
Erdoğan has consistently communicated his thoughts about the term “moderate Islam” often used in the West to describe his Justice and Development Party (AKP). As early as 2007, he said: “These epithets of ‘moderate Islam’ are very ugly, it is disrespectful and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”
In keeping with Erdoğan’s assertions, the Turkish government-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) published in July a detailed 140-page report, which stated that Islam is “superior” to Judaism and Christianity, and that “interfaith dialogue is unacceptable.”
An ostensibly ‘moderate’ Muslim leader abhors the mere mention of the word ‘moderate’ in relation to Islam.
The report focuses on the teachings and goals of the US-based Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government accuses of orchestrating the attempted coup in July 2016.
In the third chapter, the authors of the report slam Gülen for trying to “combine or equate Islam with Christianity” under the guise of dialogue. It says, in part:
Gülen’s claim that anyone who believes in the trinity of Christianity should not be immediately declared an unbeliever does not comply with Islam’s Tawhid belief [oneness of Allah] in any way. It is obvious that such a claim, which is part of his interfaith activities, is nothing but an attempt to whitewash the trinity of Christianity and to make the trinity legitimate in the eyes of Muslims.
When it comes to proving this perverted thought of his, he does not even back down from distorting the meaning of a Koranic verse. However, all Islamic scholars understand that the verse which says, ‘They have certainly disbelieved who say, Allah is the third of three,’ (Mâide 5/73) means that those who believe in the trinity are kafirs[infidels].
His [Gülen’s] statements that attempt to whitewash Christians against whom the Koran provides very harsh criticisms because of their opposition to Tawhid are unacceptable. For according to Islam, after Allah sent Islam as the last religion, Christianity lost its validity.
The report concludes:
Islam is the last divine religion sent to the entire humanity. All of the former religions lost their validity when Prophet Mohammed, the last pearl of the sequence of prophets, was sent as a prophet and the Koran was sent as the last divine book. Hence, according to Islam, it is unacceptable to evaluate Islam on the same level as Judaism and Christianity and to engage in ‘interfaith dialogue’ by saying that former religions continue to be ‘true religions.’ To bring Islam, the last and only true religion, next to other religions does not comply with Islam’s uniqueness and superiority in the eyes of Allah.
In other words, while many Western governments and Christian leaders consider Turkey a “moderate” ally, and include Islam in their interfaith activities, the powers-that-be in Ankara proudly declare Christians and all other non-Muslims to be kafirs, in accordance with Islamic doctrine.
To grasp the depth of this divide, one needs to understand the word kafir, and its significance to Muslims. Dr. Bill Warner, director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI), explains:
The usual translation of this Arabic word is unbeliever, but unbeliever is only a very small part of its meaning. It is the Koran that defines the word ‘kafir’ and it says the most terrible things can happen to them. The Koranic doctrine about kafirs says they are hated and are Satan’s friends. Kafirs can be robbed, killed, tortured, raped, mocked, cursed, condemned and plotted against. The Koran does not have one good thing to say about kafirs…
“For over the last 1,400 years, 270 million kafirs have died as a result of the political doctrine of Islam. It is the biggest single source of suffering in the history of the world.