The "Aggressive Person Who Incites the Young" Claim
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
The accusation belongs to 2016. In the period 12 April – 28 July 2016 the theologian Faruk Beşer accused Alparslan Kuytul of being "an aggressive, provocative person who incites the young" and of "bringing his members out onto the streets".
An accusation of this kind has two separate measures, and both can be checked from outside.
The first is manner. Throughout those three and a half months the accusations remained one-sided; Kuytul did not reply. He himself later wrote the reason for the silence: he did not want the dispute to gladden the enemies of Islam. The question of who was being aggressive answers itself once the sentences uttered on the two sides in the same period are set side by side.
The second is the outcome. Provocation leaves traces: a fight, damage, a person harmed, a judicial record. In a body with thousands of members which carries out its activities in public, not one of these traces has been produced. In Kuytul's own words:
"Anyone who considers that, although I have thousands of brothers in the cause, not one of them has been mixed up in a bad incident to this day, can also understand that I provoke and incite no one."
The side making the accusation likewise produced no concrete incident throughout those three and a half months: not a date, not a place, not a person harmed. And what is called "bringing them out onto the streets" is the exercise of the right of assembly and demonstration; none of it turned into violence.
What is left as evidence is only the accusation itself. An opinion does not turn into evidence by being repeated.
When and in what words was the accusation made?
Between 12 April 2016 and 28 July 2016 the theologian Faruk Beşer used the expressions "an aggressive, provocative person who incites the young" and "one who provokes his associates and brings them out onto the streets" about Alparslan Kuytul in his social media posts. The same posts also described members of the community as "ignorant", "brainless" and "a herd".
Calling a person aggressive is easy. Testing it is just as easy, because there are two tangible measures: the words spoken and the outcome that follows.
The first test: three and a half months of silence
The accusations went on for three and a half months, and throughout that whole time they went unanswered. Kuytul wrote not one reply and did not touch on the subject in a single talk. In the answer he finally wrote, he leaves this comparison to the reader: let the manner of the two sides in the same period be set side by side.
The reason for the silence is in the same text — the matter was not one of personal offence:
"I have kept silent to this day towards Faruk Beşer, who at every opportunity he finds speaks harshly of me and of my associates and makes accusations without evidence, so as not to gladden the enemies of Islam."
The number of sentences uttered in those three and a half months by the side said to be aggressive is zero. Seen from here, the measure of manner works against the claim.
The second test: the trace left behind
Incitement and provocation do not stay abstract. If people have been incited, somewhere a fight breaks out, a window is broken, a person is harmed, a report is drawn up. The claim concerns a body of thousands of people, reaching from secondary-school pupils to university students, which organises conferences and events with large attendance. If a single incident of violence involving one member of such a body could be produced, that would be the evidence for this accusation.
It has not been produced. What is more, what is at issue here is a religious community whose activities are carried out in public and which is closely watched; had there been an incident of public disorder, it would be expected to be found rather than not found.
What does "bringing them out onto the streets" mean?
There is an assumption quietly accepted inside the expression: people coming together, walking, speaking in a square is recounted as though it were in itself a fault. Yet these are the exercise of the right of assembly and demonstration, and on their own they make no one guilty.
The expression "being brought out onto the streets" pictures the crowd as a mass without will, being steered. It erases the difference between steering a crowd and the people who join a crowd making their own choice. There is a single distinguishing question: did those marches turn into violence? To this day the answer has not changed — no.
What is left?
This is why the label is "Unfounded". Not one incident, not one case file, not one injured party has been produced in support of the claim. What is there is only an opinion, the repetition of that opinion, and a habit of treating the repetition itself as evidence.
In his answer Kuytul recalls the measure with a hadith: bringing the evidence falls to the one who makes the claim. Whoever says a heavy thing about a person must also carry that word.
The other subjects from the same period: the "He Says Tawhid but Divides the Muslims" claim and why was the call for a mutual imprecation made to Faruk Beşer?