The "He Used the Prophet for His Own Benefit" Claim

Out of context

Claim

In the press statement in Ankara, Alparslan Kuytul said that the Prophet was present there, and so used the prophets for his own benefit; in any case the Prophet does not come to a place.

Claimed by: Social media accounts that shared the cropped version of the speech, and a professor of theology10 April 2016

Fact

The speech was delivered in Ankara on Sunday 10 April 2016. The CHP-run Yenimahalle Municipality cancelled the Nâzım Hikmet Cultural Centre, which had been rented for a fee, two days before the conference; posters had been put up, announcements had been made, costs had been incurred. Participants who had come from every corner of Turkey gathered in front of the hall; riot police and water cannon vehicles were deployed.

The subject of the twenty-minute press statement was this cancellation. In the excerpt put into circulation, however, that section is absent; there is only the brief mention of a dream at the end of the speech.

What was said is a single sentence: according to a true dream seen by two people, the Prophet too is in that crowd. Not even the whole of the dream was recounted. That the Prophet was present there bodily was never said at all, and Kuytul has since explicitly rejected this.

He himself sums up the resulting picture as follows: the oppression and the obstruction were not discussed, no one condemned the municipality's decision, and only the dream entered the agenda.

Why this label, "Out of context"?

Because the starting point of the claim is true: a dream really was spoken of. Rather than deny this, we write it openly.

But recounting a dream is not a fault. The true dream is established by the Qur'an and by the hadiths; the sura of Yusuf is woven from beginning to end out of dreams and their interpretation. Kuytul did not take a decision on the basis of the dream, did not derive a ruling from it, did not call anyone to anything — in a tense moment he conveyed a heartening piece of good news. The example of giving good news in a hard time is found in the sunna.

This is exactly where the claim goes wrong: it conveys a piece of good news as though it were a claim of proof.

The event itself

On Sunday 10 April 2016 there was a conference in Ankara. The hall — the Nâzım Hikmet Cultural Centre — had been rented for a fee from the CHP-run Yenimahalle Municipality. Two days before the conference the municipality went back on its word and cancelled the hall. Posters had been put up, announcements had been made, and a considerable cost had been incurred.

Before the cancellation, officials of the foundation went to the CHP headquarters and asked that the promise given be remembered; the result did not change. The participants had come from every corner of Turkey, and a press statement was made in front of the hall. The atmosphere was tense: there were riot police, water cannon vehicles and announcements to disperse. The speech was made under these conditions.

The twenty minutes that are not in the excerpt

The press statement lasted about twenty minutes and its real subject was the cancellation. For most of the speech Kuytul addressed the CHP: he said that going back on a promise given, under pressure from a few people, is a problem of governance, and that a political structure which aspires to govern the state cannot behave in this way.

None of this section is in the excerpt. What is left is the brief mention of a dream at the end of the speech. The result is plain: the obstruction itself was never discussed, and only the excerpt entered the agenda.

What was said about the dream?

What was said is a single sentence: according to a dream seen by two people, the Prophet too is in that crowd. The whole of the dream was not recounted, no ruling was built upon it, and no one was called to any action.

The objection in the claim, "does the Prophet ever come to a place", is directed at a sentence that was never uttered. Kuytul has explicitly stated that he did not say the Prophet was present there bodily.

The "you should have given the microphone to the Prophet" objection

A professor of theology wrote on social media that, since the Prophet was there, the microphone should have been given to him. Kuytul's answer was to turn the objection's own logic back upon it:

"The Qur'an says that wherever you may be, God is with you. In that case, go on, give the microphone to God! There are angels on our right and on our left, are there not? Then give the microphone to the angels."

The matter here is not a riddle to be answered but a concept: maiyyah. God's being with the servant is not a bodily presence; in religious texts this kind of togetherness is figurative. The same standard applies to the togetherness seen in a dream — either it is figurative, or it is some other state known to God. To read the sentence as a bodily claim is a meaning the objector adds to the text themselves.

The one does not act upon a dream objection

Kuytul's answer to this objection is not to reject it but to accept it: one does not act upon a dream, one does not derive a ruling from a dream. No such claim was made in any case. No one went to Ankara because of a dream, and the action was not carried out according to a dream.

What was recounted is of a different kind: not a ruling but good news. The example of giving good news at a hard moment is in the Battle of the Trench; the announcement of future conquests while under siege is of the same kind. The true dream itself is established by the Qur'an — Yusuf's dream, the ruler's dream and the dreams of his companions in prison are recounted in the same sura, and all of them come about as they were seen.

You are not obliged to believe

Kuytul asks no one to accept the dream. He finds it entirely reasonable for a person to say, "I do not know this person, and I do not believe the dream they saw either." What he himself does consists of examining whether those who recount the dream are people known for years to be balanced; he says that he does not pass on every dream he is told, either.

So there is no imposition here. What has enlarged the dispute is not the content of the dream, but the fact that the conditions under which the speech was made, and what it was made about, have been removed from the excerpt.

The question that remains

The advice Kuytul gives regarding excerpts is a single sentence: when something is heard, the whole of the recording should be watched, not the shortened version. Someone who passes judgement on a half-minute excerpt instead of a twenty-minute recording has spoken not about a subject, but about what was put in front of them.

After the whole dispute, the question that remains unasked is this: why was a hall that had been paid for cancelled two days before the conference? The function of the excerpt is to ensure that this question is not asked.

A step-by-step account of the method: Cutting a sentence in the middle: how are cropped videos produced?