Claims About the Coronavirus and the Prayer Bans
The Claim That He Said "Taking Precautions Is a Betrayal of Islam"
Distorted
Claim
Fact
The sentence went into circulation in quotation marks in the reports describing how, on the night of 21 May 2020, people who wanted to perform the tarawih prayer in Adana were taken into custody; it was given there as Kuytul's reaction to the Eid curfew. To this day neither a recording of it nor a text of it has been produced.
What he did say about the ban, on the other hand, is on record from beginning to end: the Eid address given on the evening of 22 May 2020. The subject of the address is the four-day ban that was to begin at midnight that night (23-26 May 2020). The objection is directed at this: the ban does not prevent what it means to prevent. People do not squeeze their Eid visiting into the day the ban begins; they exchange Eid greetings on the Friday as well and on the Wednesday as well. The measure therefore looks not like a precaution that reduces transmission but like a practice that wears away the culture of Eid. That is what was said.
What he said about precautions themselves is in the same address:
"Of course a number of precautions must be taken. No one is saying, let us pick a fight with the virus."
"You can say to me, 'you have to keep your distance so that this virus does not spread'. Fine. I will comply with that as well."
The same address ends with this advice to those listening: "Let us exchange our Eid greetings quickly, without embracing, without shaking hands, from a distance of one to one and a half metres."
A person cannot both say "precaution is betrayal" and, in the same address, advise exchanging Eid greetings at a distance and without contact.
Why this label, "Distorted"?
The side of the claim that is true: He really did oppose the curfew imposed on the days of Eid, and he criticised it harshly.
Why this is not a fault: To discuss whether a ban is consistent is not to reject precautions. The sentence in quotation marks, however, was not relayed but constructed: an objection raised against the proportion of the ban has been presented as though it had been raised against precaution itself.
Where did the sentence come from?
On the night of 21 May 2020 in Adana, a group that wanted to perform the tarawih prayer in the open air was taken into custody. In the reports that appeared over the following days, while the incident was being described, a sentence said to belong to Kuytul went into circulation in quotation marks: that he had reacted to the Eid curfew and claimed that "the precaution taken was a betrayal of Islam and of Muslims".
Neither a recording nor a text of this sentence has been produced. What he did say about the ban, on the other hand, is on record: the Eid address he gave on the evening of 22 May 2020 is public from beginning to end, and there is no such sentence in it.
What did he actually say on 22 May 2020?
The subject of this part of the address is the four-day curfew that was to begin at midnight that night. The logic of the objection is simple: the ban does not stop what it aims at.
"If I am going to exchange Eid greetings, I can exchange them with my family and with my friends today as well. In that case, what is the sense of banning the Sunday, of declaring a curfew?"
The claim here is not "let no precaution be taken" but "this precaution targets not transmission but Eid". What troubles Kuytul is that the ban was placed on the day of Eid even though everyone knew it could not do away with Eid visiting — in his view this is the wearing away of a culture that has its source in religion. No one is obliged to share this view; but this is what was being discussed.
The rest of the address looks in the same direction. He lists the mahya lights strung between the minarets not being put up that Ramadan, and the "Welcome, Ramadan" banners hung across the streets being cut down at night when no one was about, and he asks a single question: what has this to do with transmission? What he complains of is not a health rule but the erasing of the public visibility of Ramadan and of Eid.
What he said about precautions
In the same address there are three separate sentences about precautions, and all three look in the same direction:
- "Of course a number of precautions must be taken. No one is saying, let us pick a fight with the virus."
- "You can say, 'you have to keep your distance so that this virus does not spread'. Fine. I will comply with that as well."
- "Let us exchange our Eid greetings quickly, without embracing, without shaking hands, from a distance of one to one and a half metres."
The last of these is the closing of the address. That is, the address to which the charge of "betrayal" is attributed ends by advising those listening to exchange Eid greetings at a distance and without contact.
What was done on the ground?
The consistency between word and conduct can be seen in the footage from those same days as well. On the night of 21 May 2020, since the mosque and the park were closed, those who wanted to pray on the pavement were wearing masks and there was distance between them. The next morning, the dawn prayer performed by the crowd waiting for those in custody was carried in the reports under the headline "they prayed with zero distance between them"; yet in that same report's own footage there is about one and a half metres between the rows.
The same method is at work in two places at once: a prayer performed at a distance is relayed as one "without distance", and an objection directed at an inconsistency is relayed as "hostility to precautions".
Where exactly is the distortion?
The most effective way of distorting a statement is not to relay it wrongly but to change what it is aimed at. Both the subject and the verb of the sentence are more or less preserved; only what it was said about changes:
| What was said | What was relayed |
|---|---|
| The ban placed on the day of Eid does not prevent the exchanging of Eid greetings; it targets the culture of Eid. | To take precautions is a betrayal of Islam. |
| I comply with the distance rule, and I advise that it be complied with. | He rejects the precautions. |
Quotation marks tell the reader, "this is the man's own sentence". To place in quotation marks a sentence that cannot be produced is not reporting but manufacture.
Two headings that should be read together with this one: The "He Used the Friday Prayer Objection as a Political Tool" Claim and the claim that he did not take the epidemic seriously.