'Tomatoes are Christian,' Egyptian Salafi group warns

This will never fly in Turkey, where tomatoes are such a staple of life, but is interesting none the less:

A Salafi group called the "Popular Egyptian Islamic Association" has warned Muslims against eating tomatoes on the grounds that the fruit is a "Christian food,"NowLebanon.com has reported. 
 
The group based its claim on the fact that a shape resembling a cross is revealed when one cuts a tomato in half. 
 
The association published the warning on its Facebook page with a photo of a tomato cut in half, revealing a cross-shaped interior. 

A message posted on the page read, "Eating tomatoes is forbidden because they are Christian. [The tomato] praises the cross instead of Allah and says that Allah is three [in reference to the Holy Trinity]."
 
The message went on to say, "I implore you to spread this photo because there is a sister from Palestine who saw the Prophet of Allah in a vision and he was crying, warning his nation against eating [tomatoes]. If you don’t spread this [message], know that it is the devil who stopped you.”
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Bell-tower of Armenian church in Turkey back after 97 years

The bell-tower of Surp Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbakır, Turkey, is set to return to use after a 97-year interval, with a new bell made in Russia, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

As part of repair and restoration work at the Surp Giragos Church a new bell was made in Moscow, and has been delivered to Diyarbakır. The bronze bell weighs 100 kilograms, and will ring from the bell-tower beginning at its reopening ceremony on November 4.

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How far will new Constitution protect freedom of religion or belief?

Turkey's Constitutional Reconciliation Commission (AUK) has begun the drafting a new Constitution. But the political parties represented on the AUK have not reached a consensus on freedom of religion or belief, Forum 18 News Service notes. What are the implications of the new Constitution's possible omission of parts of Turkey's international religious freedom commitments, affecting for example religious education, conscientious objection, and the neutrality of the state? The scope of constitutional guarantees of religious freedom in Turkey should not be limited by the boundaries of the AKP government. Constitutional provisions must reflect the provisions on religious freedom in Turkey's international human rights commitments.
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Turks in Germany are Religious, but Favor Integration

When news hit the headlines this spring that Salafists in Germany were handing out free Korans in city centers across the country, the outcry was immediate. Politicians called for the campaign to be banned, journalists wrote extensively about Salafist radicalism and even the publishing house printing the free Korans distanced itself.

One group of people living in Germany, however, was not nearly as put off by the promotion. According to a new survey among those of Turkish descent living in the country, almost two-thirds of those aged between 15 and 29 consider the distribution of the Koran to be "good" or "very good," and one-third of them would donate money to the cause.

The result, says Holger Liljeberg, who heads Info GmbH, the company that conducted the survey, "could be the result of a resurgence among young people of religious values from their parents' homeland." Liljeberg, however, warned against concluding that the survey results -- based on interviews with 1,011 people of Turkish heritage in Germany over the age of 15 -- indicate a trend toward radicalization. Indeed, even as the number of those who identify themselves as strictly religious is rising (from 33 percent in 2009 to 37 percent this year), so too is the share of immigrants who wish to integrate completely into German society.

The willingness of Turkish migrants and their descendents to integrate into German society remains high and is climbing. Whereas 70 percent said in 2010 that they want to "absolutely and without reservations integrate into German society," the new survey found that 78 percent of respondents agreed. Similarly, whereas 59 percent said two years ago that they wanted to belong to German society, 75 percent say so now. Fully 95 percent say that all children with Turkish backgrounds should go to day care facilities so as to learn German prior to entering school.

Overall, the survey released on Friday paints an image of a Turkish community in Germany that is split between a trend toward increased religiosity, particularly among the younger generations, and a desire to fit into German society. For example, whereas only 8 percent of those surveyed said they were in favor of purely Turkish-language elementary schools for children with Turkish backgrounds, 62 percent (up from 40 percent in 2010) said they prefer hanging out with fellow Turks.

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Turkey's Religious Office to Extend Reach Beyond Mosques

The Office of Religious Affairs (ORA), the official body responsible for regulating religious practices and bureaus in Turkey, announced that it is also willing to provide “religious social services.” The ORA’s Director General of Religious Services, Dr. Yasar Yigit, said that the organization wants to go beyond managing mosques, and offer socially-oriented services in senior homes and prisons. Yigit said that the ORA also wanted to be involved in activities involving street children, anti-drug campaigns and the struggle against terrorism.

Dr. Yigit said that his department — which was founded in the same year that the Turkish Republic was created — will have 150,000 personnel in all corners of the country by the end of the year. “The ORA has become a gigantic institution. You can even come across an ORA officer in the most remote town in Turkey. Today, 3,500 staff members are serving abroad wherever there are Turks. We are about to sign protocols with the ministries of justice, health, family affairs and interior to regulate such activities,” he added.

Asserting that the society is in need of these services, Yigit said, “There may be those asking why we are expanding the scope of our services. It is because of the current trend worldwide: religion is increasingly gaining a functional role. This trend affects all societies and does not only apply only to our religion. Religion is now the main pillar for societies, cultures and civilizations.”
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Turkey’s Human Rights Hypocrisy

A NEW political order is emerging in the Middle East, and Turkey aspires to be its leader by taking a stand against authoritarian regimes. Earlier this week, Turkey’s prime minister,Recep Tayyip Erdogan, went so far as to denounce the Syrian government’s continuing massacres of civilians as“attempted genocide.”

Turkey’s desire to champion human rights in the region is a welcome development, but Mr. Erdogan’s condemnation of Syria is remarkably hypocritical. As long as Turkey continues to deny crimes committed against non-Turks in the early 1900s, during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, its calls for freedom, justice and humanitarian values will ring false.

Turkey’s attempt to cultivate an image as the global protector of Muslim rights is compromised by a legacy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against Christians and terror against Arabs and Kurds. Memories of these crimes are very much alive throughout former Ottoman territories. And Turkey cannot serve as a democratic model until it acknowledges that brutal violence, population transfers and genocide underlie the modern Turkish state.  

Using documents from the Ottoman government archives in Istanbul, which were once classified as top secret, I have sought to pull back the veil on Turkey’s century of denial. These documents clearly demonstrate that Ottoman demographic policy from 1913 to 1918 was genocidal. Indeed, the phrase “crimes against humanity” was coined as a legal term and first used on May 24, 1915, in response to the genocide against Armenians and other Christian civilians.

Britain, France and Russia initially defined Ottoman atrocities as “crimes against Christianity” but later substituted “humanity” after considering the negative reaction that such a specific term could elicit from Muslims in their colonies.

Today, Mr. Erdogan is seeking to be a global spokesman for Muslim values. In June 2011, he told thousands gathered to celebrate the landslide victory of his Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P.: “Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul; Beirut won as much as Izmir; Damascus won as much as Ankara. Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza won as much as Diyarbakir.” 

Speaking in support of oppressed Muslims has earned him popularity. But if Mr. Erdogan aspires to defend freedom and democracy in the region, he must also address the legitimate fears of Christians in the Middle East. Just as the European powers opted for universalism in 1915 by denouncing “crimes against humanity,” Mr. Erdogan must move beyond his narrow focus on “crimes against Muslims.” All oppressed peoples deserve protection.

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Oldest Christian monastery at risk

The Mongolians failed to destroy it 700 years ago despite the massacre of 40 friars and 400 Christians. Yet the existence of the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, the fifth century Mor Gabriel Monastery in the Tur Abdin plane (the mountain of God's servants) near the Turkish-Syrian border, is at risk after a ruling by Turkey's highest appeals court in Ankara.

Founded in 397 by the monks Samuel and Simon, Mor Gabriel in eastern Anatolia has been the heart of the Orthodox Syrian community for centuries. Syriacs hail from a branch of Middle Eastern Christianity and are one of the oldest communities in Turkey.

Today the monastery is inhabited by Mor Timotheus Samuel Aktash, 3 monks, 11 nuns and 35 boys who are learning the monastery's teachings, the ancient Aramaic language spoken by Jesus and the Orthodox Syriac tradition.

Although the monastery is situated in an area at the centre of conflicts between Kurdish separatist with the armed PKK group and the Turkish army, Mor Gabriel welcomes 20,000 pilgrims every year.

The Syriac Orthodox community - estimated to be 2.5 million across the world - is under the authority of the Patriarch of Antioch and considers the monastery a 'second Jerusalem'.


Today only 3,500 people are left and the 'second Jerusalem' is in danger. The heads of the three neighbouring Muslim villages, Kurds with the Belebi tribe, filed a lawsuit against the monastery years ago with the support of an MP member of the Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Under the lawsuit, the Syriacs are accused of practicing 'anti-Turkish activities' by providing an education to young people, including non Christians, and of illegally occupying land which belongs to the neighbouring villages.

After a number of contrasting verdicts, the highest appeals court in Ankara, which is close to the government, has ruled in favour of the village chiefs and said the land which has been part of the monastery for 1,600 years is not its property, Turkish newspaper Zaman reported.

The lawsuit also claimed that the sanctuary was built over the ruins of a mosque, forgetting that Mohammed was born 170 years after its foundation.
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Turkey urged to ease up on Greek Orthodox seminary

 Turkey's top Muslim cleric has supported calls for the government to allow the reopening of a Greek Orthodox seminary.

Mehmet Gormez said that Thursday after meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I during the first visit by a Turkish religious leader to the Istanbul-based Patriarchate since 1923.

Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, said he hopes Halki Theological School will be allowed to reopen on Heybeliada Island near Istanbul.

The school stopped admitting new students in 1971 under a Turkish law that put religious and military training under state control and closed in 1985.

Mostly Muslim Turkey, which is seeking to join the EU, has small Christian and Jewish communities. The bloc has made improved rights for the religious groups a condition for membership.

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Muslims praying that historic museum in Turkey be turned into mosque

Thousands of devout Muslims prayed outside Turkey's historic Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday to protest a 1934 law that bars religious services at the former church and mosque.

Worshippers shouted, "Break the chains, let Hagia Sophia Mosque open," and "God is great" before kneeling in prayer as tourists looked on.

Turkey's secular laws prevent Muslims and Christians from formal worship within the 6th-century monument, the world's greatest cathedral for almost a millennium before invading Ottomans converted it into a mosque in the 15th century.

"Keeping Hagia Sophia Mosque closed is an insult to our mostly Muslim population of 75 million. It symbolises our ill-treatment by the West," Salih Turhan, head of the Anatolian Youth Association, which organised the event, told the crowd, whose male and female worshippers prayed separately according to Islamic custom.

The government has rejected requests from both Christians and Muslims to hold formal prayers at the site, historically and spiritually significant to adherents of both religions.

The rally's size and location signals more tolerance for religious expression under Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, whose party traces its roots to a banned Islamist movement.

His government has also allowed Christian worship at sites that were off-limits for decades, as it seeks to bring human rights in line with the European Union, which it aims to join.

Turhan told Reuters his group staged the prayers ahead of celebrations next week marking the 559th anniversary of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet's conquest of Byzantine Constantinople.

"As the grandchildren of Mehmet the Conqueror, seeking the re-opening Hagia Sophia as a mosque is our legitimate right," Turhan said in an interview.

Worshippers refrained from entering the museum, one of Turkey's most-visited tourist destinations and whose famous dome is considered a triumph of Byzantine architecture.

Most Turks appear satisfied with it remaining a museum as a kind of compromise between its conflicting historic roles.
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Turkish government hasn’t reopened Greek Orthodox seminary

The Turkish prime minister has promised to reopen the seminary. But it has not yet been reopened.

“Let me start by saying that we respect everyone’s faith and belief and we also believe that everyone should be free to exercise and practice their beliefs,” Gul said through an interpreter. “This is something we believe in, frankly and truly, the government believes in this. But there are some issues, problems, that need to be resolved and we’re taking some steps to resolve them.

“The issue of the seminary has to do with the constitution and the principle of secularism,” he said. “We have to treat all religions equally. And to find a solution to the seminary it was suggested to attach it to the department of theology under the Istanbul University, but this was not a suggestion that was accepted. This is something that we’re looking into.

“People of all faiths should be free to learn their faith and teach it, and I’m sure that with this work that is ongoing with the drawing up of the constitution, this is something that can be resolved,” Gul said.

I mentioned to him that there were once thousands and thousands of Greeks in Istanbul, that Greeks and Muslims had lived there together for centuries, but that in the last 100 years or so, under the secular Turkish state, that number has dwindled.

Does Gul see the number increasing or decreasing with the new promises of tolerance and acceptance of minority rights?

“We are aware of it,” Gul said. “We are in constant contact with our Orthodox citizens, with the patriarch and the leaders of the religious communities, and they are very pleased with the steps we’re taking.”

“When we were in the opposition, there were some who would describe us as radical and say that if we ever came into government we would take Turkey away from the West,” Gul said. “But I think these emerging countries get responsibility, they will act rationally.”

So far, with chaos on all her borders, Turkey has been acting rationally and well.

“Opening Halki would be seen so positively,” said Bishop Demetrios. “To talk of religious freedom, and then to demonstrate it to the world. That would tell the world that Turkey has truly changed.”

40 % of Turkish population does not want to live with the Christian neighbor

Today head of the Armenian science department of “Noravanq” educational foundation, expert on Turkey Alistakes Simavoryan and expert of the same foundation Vahram Hovyan met journalists and referred to the topic of religious intolerance against Christians in Turkey.

“The social inquiries in Turkey show that 40 % of the population does not want to live with the Christian neighbor. And 58 % of them does not want to live with Jew neighbor”, Simavoryan noted.  Expert of the “Noravanq” foundation Vahram Hovyan announced in his turn that the attacks and pressure against Christians are held both by the government and by the Turk extremists.
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Protestant Church Lodges Complaint Against Journalist

In an incidence of slander reminiscent of the type of media articles that appeared before the 2007 Malatya killings, journalist Banu Avar spoke aggressively against the Protestant Community in Turkey at a book fair on May 20th in Kocaeli, Turkey.  In an interview at the fair, Avar stated, "There are more than 54,000 Protestant house churches in Turkey, of which you can find the greatest number in Izmit, Izmit was chosen as pilot project for this. . . .  They are working to make us all Protestant."

In response to this, the local Protestant community has lodged a complaint against Avar.  The actually number of Protestant Christians in all of Turkey is around 4 or 5 thousand, with the number of churches around 120.  Avar also made attempts to establish links between the Protestant community and a political conspiracy.  The leaders of the local Protestant Christian community are hoping to discourage this kind of discourse with the complaint.  In the past, these types of articles and media coverage have only served to encourage fear and hate crimes against minority Christians in Turkey.
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Turkey To Make Religious Building Donation Tax-Deductible

Turkey is planning to make donations for the construction of religious buildings tax-deductible as part of a package of investment incentives. The measure, included in a draft law submitted to parliament in Ankara today, covers all places of worship built with official permission as well as religious education facilities such as Koran schools. Donors will be able to deduct contributions of as much as 10 percent of taxable income.

Turkey, with a population of about 75 million, has 82,000 mosques and another 35,000 at the planning stage, according to the Presidency of Religious Affairs.

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Internet helps to spread Gospel in Turkey

Operation Mobilisation’s Bible Correspondence Course (BCC) in Turkey has seen its 50-year ministry transformed through the internet.

For 30 years, the BCC advertised its course through mail and door-to-door distribution. Then, in the early 1990s, the BCC began advertising in newspapers, which more than quadrupled the number of contacts. After launching the BCC’s first websites in the late 1990s, the number of applicants skyrocketed, especially after using GoogleAds to promote the websites. This past year, more than a quarter of a million unique visitors found BCC websites.

In addition to using the Internet to advertise the course specifically, OM in Turkey has used Facebook to reach people with the Good News. More than 32 million Turks have Facebook profiles, making Turkey the fifth largest user of Facebook internationally. The BCC’s Facebook page, titled kutsalkitap.org, launched in 2010 with just eight fans. But in just a few months, the page had over 6,000 fans, and now the site is approaching 24,000 “likes” in a country where less than 5,000 people profess faith in Christ.

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The case for privatizing religion in Turkey

The recent decision by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to privatize state theaters has caused a wide stir.

While I do believe the state should provide funds for the arts, the state employment of actors and management of theaters were not about the arts but state control of the public and cultural space. In fact, communist countries have always had a keen commitment to “supporting” the arts and to using them as an important vehicle to influence and control public imagination. Therefore, as painful it is for many in the industry who will lose their jobs, in the long run, the privatization of theaters will provide freedom and market competition necessary for better productions and performance by actors. There is, however, an elephant in the room -- a much larger, powerful state control mechanism: state regulation of religion. It is really no surprise that the newly founded Turkish Republic saw it vital to establish the Directorate of Religious Affairs and, through it, to regulate and manage the type of Islam it sought to enforce.

The directorate still consumes a giant slice of the state budget, employs all imams in the country and by and large still dictates particular readings of Islam. In the last few years, the official enforcement of a particular creed has been widely challenged and various groups who do not fit into that creed have argued for representation and funds from the directorate. However, these acts are not enough. The directorate must be decommissioned, just like state theaters.

There are two common worries regarding the decommissioning of the directorate. The first one comes from concerned secularist circles, which fear that an end to state regulation would open the floodgates of Islamism and all sorts of problems with religious groups. The second one comes from concerned conservative circles, which fear decommissioning the directorate would mean that clergymen and mosques would not receive funding to perform their duties and thus the practice of Islam would be harmed. As convincing as these concerns sound to their respective adherers, they are both wrong.
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