The "He Deceives People with Religion" Claim
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
This accusation was repeated in two separate disputes by two different people. In August 2014 Orhan Göktaş, head of the Adana branch of Mazlumder, wrote that Alparslan Kuytul was taking in the sincere people around him. And in the period 12 April – 28 July 2016 the theologian Faruk Beşer said the same thing in his social media posts, using the image of the devil who approaches from the right: religion is being used to deceive people.
What is missing in both is the same thing: a concrete example. To deceive with religion is an act; in which lesson, in which fatwa, in which recording it was committed can be shown. With the whole archive of more than thirty years of lessons, conferences and question-and-answer sessions lying open, not a single example was picked out of it.
Kuytul's answer settles on exactly this point. The Qur'an commands avoiding much suspicion (al-Hujurat 12); the ruling on those who make a heavy accusation and cannot bring witnesses is plain in Surah an-Nur. The Prophet's measure is the same: bringing the evidence falls to the one who makes the claim. An accusation without evidence binds not the one it is aimed at but the one who makes it.
The only thing cited as evidence in Göktaş's article was verse 31 of Surah at-Tawbah. Those addressed in that verse are religious scholars who treat what Allah has made permitted as forbidden and what He has made forbidden as permitted, and the people who accept this. Kuytul's stance as it stands in the recordings is the opposite: opposing those who present the forbidden as permitted is one of the subjects he has repeated in his lessons for years.
What is left is not an example but an attribution.
The other accusations arising from these same two texts are on separate pages: the claim that the members of the religious community are an "unquestioning herd" and the "he has people call him Hocaefendi" claim.
Two addresses for the same accusation
The accusation of deceiving with religion meets us in two disputes independent of each other.
The first is in August 2014, in the article entitled A Vanguard Generation or a Dead Generation? by Orhan Göktaş, head of the Adana branch of Mazlumder. There it was put forward that Kuytul was taking in the sincere people around him and even thought he could take in Allah.
The second is in the period 12 April – 28 July 2016, in the social media posts of the theologian Faruk Beşer. There too the image of the devil who approaches from the right was used, and it was said that religion was being used as a means of deception. The coup accusation made in the same posts is taken up on a separate page.
How is an accusation like this proved?
Deceiving with religion is not an abstract failing but an act that has been committed. Its proof, too, looks to the act:
- a fatwa presenting the forbidden as permitted or the permitted as forbidden,
- a lesson concealing a known truth or teaching its opposite,
- a benefit obtained by citing religion as the reason.
Had any one of these been produced, the dispute would have ended in a day. The whole record of more than thirty years of lessons, conferences and question-and-answer sessions is published; one of them could have been picked out and set before us. In neither accusation was this done — not the name of a lesson, not a date, not a sentence.
Where the burden of proof lies
In his answer Kuytul draws the matter to this point. The Qur'an commands avoiding much suspicion (al-Hujurat 12). In Surah an-Nur the ruling on those who make a heavy accusation and cannot bring witnesses is plain. The Prophet's measure runs the same way: bringing the evidence falls to the one who makes the claim.
By this measure, expecting the person accused to clear their own name is starting from the wrong end. The responsibility rests on the one who voices the accusation, and it is met by producing a single example.
The verse put forward as evidence
Göktaş's article ends by advising the members of the religious community to read verse 31 of Surah at-Tawbah. The verse speaks of those who take their rabbis and their monks as lords besides Allah. What that taking-as-lords consists of is clear in the commentaries: it is those religious scholars treating what Allah has made permitted as forbidden and what He has made forbidden as permitted, and the people accepting that ruling.
The verse, in other words, addresses religious scholars who change the ruling of religion. The article that recommends the verse does not say which forbidden thing Kuytul has made permitted or which permitted thing he has made forbidden. It cannot say, because the stance in the recordings is the opposite: opposing those who present the forbidden as permitted is one of the subjects he has repeated in his lessons and conferences for years.
To put a verse forward as evidence also requires showing whom that verse is looking at.
The form of the answer
Kuytul did not answer these accusations with the same harshness. In his own words, the reason he kept silent for three and a half months was so as not to gladden the enemies of Islam; he came to write an answer when the accusation stretched as far as a charge of taking part in a coup.
At the end of the answer he stated that he did not forgive what was owed to him, made a call for a mutual imprecation over the coup accusation, and wrote that he was leaving the matter to Allah. That the word ends here is itself a stance: the accusation has been answered, but the one who made the claim has not been answered in kind.
The other accusations arising from these same two texts: the claim that the members of the religious community are an "unquestioning herd", the "he has people call him Hocaefendi" claim.