The claim that he declared those who go into the army, police officers and civil servants to be unbelievers
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
These sentences do not belong to Alparslan Kuytul. They belong to takfirist circles who came to the talks and tried to spread these ideas; Kuytul listed those same views one by one and rejected them.
Nor is the subject a new one: the talk "The Boundary of Faith and Unbelief", which began on 26 March 2012, consists of eleven parts, runs for roughly twenty-five hours, and its subject is directly the harm done by takfirism. When he was asked about these people, the answer he gave was this:
"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."
The rejection also has a reason behind it. The person who counts going to the state's school or becoming a civil servant as unbelief obtains permission from that same state and opens a shop, pays taxes and carries an identity card:
"If studying in the state's school makes a person an unbeliever, then you too open a shop by getting permission from the state, you even pay taxes, you carry an identity card."
That is, the criterion being put forward does not hold even in the life of the one who defends it.
In the same answer Kuytul makes a second observation: those who carry these ideas into the community target young people between seventeen and twenty-two, they are not sincere, and they have been assigned to do it.
Whose sentences are these?
The sentences the claim rests on really were spoken in a question and answer — but the speaker was not Kuytul. He is relaying them in order to reject them. The question put to him was this: people of a takfirist understanding attend a few talks and want us too to declare some people unbelievers; when we do not accept, they do not come again; what do you say about them?
The first sentence of the answer is clear: we are not takfirists, we keep our distance from takfirists too, and we have been saying this not recently but for years. Then the views voiced by those circles are listed — counting as an unbeliever the one who goes into the army, the one who becomes a police officer, the one who becomes a civil servant, the one who attends a state school, the one who votes for parties — and all of them together are rejected.
The reason for the rejection: the criterion cuts the one who lays it down as well
Kuytul does not content himself with saying "we do not say that"; he shows that the criterion is inconsistent in itself. The person who counts going to the state's school or becoming a civil servant as unbelief obtains a licence from that same state and opens a shop, pays taxes and carries an identity card. Had the criterion been applied consistently, the one who laid it down would fall under the same judgement as well:
"With the same mentality, would we then not have to call this person an unbeliever too? There are contradictions within it."
This is the soundest way of refuting a view: not accusing the other side, but applying the criterion they use to their own life and showing what comes out of it.
Who has the authority to say "unbeliever"?
The second objection concerns method. Passing a judgement of unbelief about a person is not, according to Kuytul, work that everyone can do; whoever looks at a single verse or hadith and speaks, speaks without balance, because they do not know the others.
"Deciding is the right of people with accumulated knowledge."
In the same place he recalls an old saying: a half-taught teacher takes a person out of their religion. For someone who has not finished a few books in their life to get up and call religious communities, scholars and ordinary people unbelievers is not learning but boldness.
Why are these ideas carried into the talks?
Kuytul's observation lifts the matter out of the mistakes of separate individuals. In his view, those who carry these ideas do not come of their own accord: young people between seventeen and twenty-two in particular are selected, an attempt is made to have them call everyone an unbeliever, and the aim is thus to turn the community into a shunned, disliked movement. He says that he knows some of them closely, that they are not sincere, that they are "men of certain quarters". The condition he sets for anyone who wants to come to a talk is plain: if they are coming to learn something, let them come, but let them not speak of those ideas with anyone there.
He also puts a direct question to these circles. The other religious communities have a history, a beginning, an activity; these have none:
"O takfirists! Where did you come from? Who is your teacher? You see everyone as an unbeliever, who are you! Who is supporting you?"
In a wider frame he reads takfirism as a project. His reasoning is simple: if a Muslim sees the person across from them as their brother, they cannot even slap them; if they see them as an unbeliever, they can kill them. He counts the bombs that go off in Iraq, one day in a Shia mosque and the next day in a Sunni mosque, as what grows out of this ground. So his objection to takfirism is not only one of jurisprudence, but one made in view of its consequences.
Why "Unfounded"?
Because there is no difference of interpretation or question of context here. The words alleged are on record, in the recording it is clear whom they belong to, and Kuytul's sentence is built against those words. If a view that a person rejects is relayed as their own view, there is only one response to be given: listen to the recording.
For the form the same matter took in the judicial file: the claim that Salafi and takfirist individuals attended the talks.