Is Alparslan Kuytul a takfirist?

Unfounded

Claim

Alparslan Kuytul holds a takfirist mentality; he declares Muslims, religious communities and scholars who do not think as he does to be unbelievers.

Claimed by: Some news sites and social media accounts29 January 2018

Fact

Two documents answer this claim: one is Kuytul's own recording of a talk, the other an official letter that came out of the file opened with the operation of 30 January 2018.

The first is a recording of a talk. In the talk "The Boundary of Faith and Unbelief", which began on 26 March 2012, Kuytul dealt with takfirism over eleven parts and roughly twenty-five hours. The subject of the talk was not to defend takfirism but to set out the harm it does:

"We are not takfirists, and we keep our distance from takfirists too. We have been saying this not recently but for years."

The second is an official letter. In that file there is a document based on the correspondence between the Counter-Terrorism Department of the police and the Intelligence Department of MİT. The finding that Kuytul "does not hold a Salafi and takfirist understanding" entered the state's own record with that document. The document was made public in September 2018 by his lawyer Adem Tural.

The reason for the rejection, too, has been the same for years. Kuytul regards getting Muslims to declare one another unbelievers as a project fed from outside: "Today they declare someone an unbeliever, so that tomorrow they can kill them." That is also why he gave no ground to those who came to his talks and tried to get young people to call those who go into the army, police officers and those who vote unbelievers.

The most widely circulated concrete example of this heading is on a separate page: the claim that he declared those who vote unbelievers.

What does the twenty-five-hour talk say?

The talk "The Boundary of Faith and Unbelief" began on 26 March 2012, ran to eleven parts and came to roughly twenty-five hours. Its subject was in which cases a person is to be counted as having left the religion; that is, the question of takfir itself. The recording can still be listened to today.

Kuytul explains why such a talk was needed as follows:

"At present a number of plans and projects are being carried out over the Islamic world to make Muslims declare one another unbelievers. A takfirist mentality is being instilled. Because they want Muslims to kill one another and war to break out among them."

The logic of the reasoning is simple: if a Muslim sees the person before them as their brother, they cannot so much as slap them, but if they see them as an unbeliever, they can kill them. For that reason takfir is, according to Kuytul, not a difference of opinion but the first step in setting Muslims against one another. He assesses in the same frame the bombs that went off in Iraq, one day in a Shia mosque and the next day in a Sunni mosque.

Those who came to the talks and said "call everyone an unbeliever"

When he was asked about people who attended the talks and tried to spread takfirist ideas within the community, the answer he gave was clear:

"They are trying to get people to call everyone an unbeliever. We have no such view. The one who goes into the army is supposedly an unbeliever, the one who becomes a police officer is supposedly an unbeliever, the one who votes for parties is supposedly an unbeliever! Everyone is an unbeliever, they alone are Muslims. We have not been among these people, and we will not be."

He points to young people between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two as the target of these people, and warns his brothers and sisters about the matter. His relation to the takfirist current is therefore not a closeness but an open distance that has been kept for years.

Whose business is takfir?

Kuytul's second objection concerns not the content of the ruling but the competence of the one who gives it. Takfir is a matter of knowledge; it is not deciding by looking at a single verse, but requires knowing all the verses and hadiths on the subject:

"Just as not everyone has the right to exercise ijtihad, not everyone has the right to call this or that person an unbeliever either. […] Deciding is the right of people with accumulated knowledge."

The example he uses to make this concrete shows the contradiction within takfirism itself: the person who counts studying at a state school as unbelief obtains permission from that same state and opens a shop, pays taxes and carries an identity card. If the criterion were consistent, they too would fall under the same ruling.

What this criterion amounts to in practice is the sentence "do what falls to you": prayer, zakat, fasting, conveying the message and service are everyone's business; deciding who is an unbeliever is not.

What does the official record say?

Inside the file opened with the operation of 30 January 2018 there is a document based on the correspondence between the Counter-Terrorism Department of the police and MİT. In the document, among Kuytul's statements, the findings that he "does not hold a Salafi and takfirist understanding" and that he "does not consider it right to go to conflict zones" are listed; and for the foundation it is reported that "no connection with any terrorist organisation could be found".

The value of this document lies in who wrote it. It is not the community's own defence, but the records of the very institutions that were conducting the investigation into him. The document was made public in September 2018 by his lawyer Adem Tural.

The other claims under the same heading

This page deals with the general accusation. Each of the concrete claims derived from it has been answered separately: