Claims About Sufism and the Sufi Orders
The "He Called Cübbeli Ahmet an Unbeliever" Claim
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
Alparslan Kuytul's answer is a single sentence:
"I did not call him an 'unbeliever'; nothing of the kind has ever come out of my mouth."
The course of events is this: some people tell Cübbeli Ahmet that Kuytul has called him an "unbeliever". Cübbeli Ahmet accepts this as true without checking it and gives the reply "If he calls me an unbeliever, then he himself has become an unbeliever".
Kuytul states separately that he did not answer in kind: "But even if he did call me an unbeliever, I will not do to him what he has done to me."
The name of the person who put the claim into circulation was never given; nor is there any recording, any video or any text. The only thing it rests on is the word of the one who relayed it.
This means that there is nothing about the claim that can be tested. Hundreds of hours of recordings of Kuytul's talks and conferences are openly accessible; had such a sentence been uttered, it could have been found.
Moreover, the claim also contradicts the criterion Kuytul has repeated for years on the question of takfir:
"To say of a statement that it is unbelief is not to say that the one who speaks in this way is an unbeliever. Because it may be that they meant something else."
For someone who deliberately keeps a distance between finding a view wrong and counting the person who defends that view as having left the religion, calling a named scholar an "unbeliever" would be the exact opposite of that stance.
This claim was voiced again on 7 September 2026 on the CNN Türk programme "Tarafsız Bölge". The collected answer to the imputations listed on the programme: Cübbeli Ahmet's claims about the Furkan Movement on CNN Türk — the full text of the Furkan Movement's statement.
How a remark was declared unbelief
This small episode is a good illustration of how the greater part of the claims on the site came into being. The chain consists of three links:
- Someone whose name is not given carries the report "Kuytul called you an unbeliever".
- The person it is brought to accepts it as true without looking for the recording, without asking what the original was.
- The reply that is given becomes news, and the claim now looks like a two-sided "debate".
Yet in the first link of the chain there is no evidence at all — no video, no audio recording, no text.
Why does the first link of the chain matter?
The greater part of the claims on this page rests not on a verifiable recording but on a relayed account. The difference looks small but it is decisive: if there is a recording, the claim can be tested; if there is a relayed account, it cannot. Both rejecting and accepting a claim that cannot be tested come down to the word of the other side.
That is exactly what has happened here. There is no video, no audio recording, no text. Kuytul's archive of hundreds of hours of talks and conferences is openly accessible; had such a sentence been uttered, it could have been searched for and found. No one has searched for it, no one has shown it.
His general principle on takfir
Kuytul's criterion on this question matters more than the episode itself. What he says is this:
"To say of a statement that it is unbelief is not to say that the one who speaks in this way is an unbeliever. Because it may be that they meant something else."
That is, he leaves a deliberate distance between saying that a sentence is contrary to Islam and counting the person who uttered that sentence as having left the religion. This principle is also the direct answer to the "takfirist" claim directed at him.
Why did no quarrel come out of this?
Both sides are scholars who address wide audiences. Building such a remark up on both sides could have turned into an enmity capable of occupying both religious communities for years. The reason it did not is that the second move was not made.
Kuytul's choice is on the record: he rejected the claim, but he did not answer the expression directed at him with the same expression. This says more than the claim itself — because answering in kind was the easiest option, and the one that drew the most applause.
The manner of answering
His saying that he will not do the same thing, even after the same expression has been used about him, is an attitude that recurs in most of the claims on this page: the claim is answered, but the one who made the claim is not paid back in kind.
The reason this content stands here is likewise not the size of the matter. It is a small episode, but a clean example showing how claims are produced: a relayed account with no source, a report accepted without verification, and the reply that follows. At none of the three steps does anyone open the recording and look.