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Don’t shoot me, hang me!
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"The members of the clergy of Greece may not be shot. They may only be hanged. I beg you to respect this tradition," Archbishop Damaskinos asked of the German occupation authorities in 1943. The wars, even in the times of the Nazis, were fought in a more honest way than they are today. So I thought having re-read a rich bouquets of readers’ messages that had flown into my inbox at unusual volumes. All that because I had dared to criticize Fethullah Gülen in this column on Wednesday. Forget the positive and neutral comments. There is much we should learn from the negative ones.
Of course I assume those messages were genuine and written by people who had sympathies with Mr Gülen, as they claim so, although I suspect some of them could have been sent by people who had sympathies with my sparring partner, Mustafa Akyol. (Don’t get offended Mr Akyol, I am just joking!)Â
I knew the Grand Hodja was a sacrosanct figure for his millions of followers scattered all around the world as smart missionaries. I did not know; however, that he was a kind of Muslim Pope, a human being who is never, never (repeat: never) mistaken about anything worldly. I was surprised, because this thinking is entirely against Koranic teachings. Especially when we are talking about a man, one of whose books had been proven to be a perfect product of plagiarizing.
But forget plagiarizing. In any proper interpretation of the Koran, Grand Hodja or a not-so-Grand Hodja, all human beings are just human beings full of good and evil. I thought of reminding the angry readers that associating God with any creature was one of the two unforgivable sins in Islam. I did not.
Surprisingly I discovered something common in those messages coming from all exotic and non-exotic parts of the world (I am sure David Judson would be delighted to see that our newspaper was reaching out to the world’s most unthinkable corners unless the readers were dishonest about their declarations of the cities they lived in. In two cases I had to look up in a world atlas to find out where those cities were located.) Invariably, I was not being accused of the words I wrote, but of the words I did not write. Bizarre? Perhaps not. One reader accused me of calling the Grand Hodja a terrorist although I never wrote (or even privately thought) so. On the contrary, one line of that column clearly read that "Fethullahists are of course not terrorists." Blame it on missionary blindness! These are little misunderstandings of no importance.
Another commonality was the accusation that I was an atheist bÉ..d as evoked by my previous writings, "which clearly showed that I was secular." Now we know that secular Muslims are atheist bÉ..ds. I am grateful to learn.
I discovered another quality in those messages, an excellent command of English, especially in obscene and slang language. I had to devote a considerable part of Wednesday and Thursday to linguistic research mainly to find out what those words I had not heard of before meant. I am not sure if I shall ever need to use those newly-learned words, but thank you chaps, learning is always good, even at the age of 43!
I was also grateful to that one reader who read my afterlife fortune. It is always good to know what kind of pastime one shall have to have after one’s death; although, according to that reader, my future was not very bright. At one point I was sweating reading about my afterlife, which reminded me of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Part Hell, needless to say! But thanks anyway.
The other category of messages was what one might call "the threats" but these good Muslims prefer to brand as "holy warnings." I must complain they were generally disappointingly vague in language. One wonders about the details of how those curses would take place "unless I repent and learn to respect the Grand Hodja." Again, I am grateful to one reader in particular who gave me more details about the misfortunes I shall have to face.
Ergenekon. Yes, I am a member of the Ergenekon terror organization. Evidence? Wednesday’s column. Justification? Not respecting the Grand Hodja. More than sufficient. How dare you! Pack up a few things for you will be arrested soon! I don’t think that is a possibility. Not because I never met in my life any of the Ergenekon suspects, or talked to them, but I know if I get arrested my sparring partner will rush to my aide and get me out immediately.
Having read all the messages a few times, I felt sorry NOT to have been unfair to this very distinguished community of liberal Muslims who are very talented in cursing (commenting) and threatening (warning) in excellent but vulgar English. They claim to be the people who follow a man who claims to be a man of peace. Either the Grand Hodja has failed to teach them well, or É But certainly they cannot not be allying civilizations with such sentiments and language, can they? All the same I am certain they should be hiding "that face of theirs" when they fake to the "Franks of power." After Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Davos tirade his Arab fans shouted out loud that he should be named the new caliph. Sorry lads, the position is not vacant. We already have a caliph although he resides in non-Muslim land.
I knew the Grand Hodja was a sacrosanct figure for his millions of followers scattered all around the world as smart missionaries. I did not know; however, that he was a kind of Muslim Pope, a human being who is never, never (repeat: never) mistaken about anything worldly. I was surprised, because this thinking is entirely against Koranic teachings. Especially when we are talking about a man, one of whose books had been proven to be a perfect product of plagiarizing.
But forget plagiarizing. In any proper interpretation of the Koran, Grand Hodja or a not-so-Grand Hodja, all human beings are just human beings full of good and evil. I thought of reminding the angry readers that associating God with any creature was one of the two unforgivable sins in Islam. I did not.
Surprisingly I discovered something common in those messages coming from all exotic and non-exotic parts of the world (I am sure David Judson would be delighted to see that our newspaper was reaching out to the world’s most unthinkable corners unless the readers were dishonest about their declarations of the cities they lived in. In two cases I had to look up in a world atlas to find out where those cities were located.) Invariably, I was not being accused of the words I wrote, but of the words I did not write. Bizarre? Perhaps not. One reader accused me of calling the Grand Hodja a terrorist although I never wrote (or even privately thought) so. On the contrary, one line of that column clearly read that "Fethullahists are of course not terrorists." Blame it on missionary blindness! These are little misunderstandings of no importance.
Another commonality was the accusation that I was an atheist bÉ..d as evoked by my previous writings, "which clearly showed that I was secular." Now we know that secular Muslims are atheist bÉ..ds. I am grateful to learn.
I discovered another quality in those messages, an excellent command of English, especially in obscene and slang language. I had to devote a considerable part of Wednesday and Thursday to linguistic research mainly to find out what those words I had not heard of before meant. I am not sure if I shall ever need to use those newly-learned words, but thank you chaps, learning is always good, even at the age of 43!
I was also grateful to that one reader who read my afterlife fortune. It is always good to know what kind of pastime one shall have to have after one’s death; although, according to that reader, my future was not very bright. At one point I was sweating reading about my afterlife, which reminded me of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Part Hell, needless to say! But thanks anyway.
The other category of messages was what one might call "the threats" but these good Muslims prefer to brand as "holy warnings." I must complain they were generally disappointingly vague in language. One wonders about the details of how those curses would take place "unless I repent and learn to respect the Grand Hodja." Again, I am grateful to one reader in particular who gave me more details about the misfortunes I shall have to face.
Ergenekon. Yes, I am a member of the Ergenekon terror organization. Evidence? Wednesday’s column. Justification? Not respecting the Grand Hodja. More than sufficient. How dare you! Pack up a few things for you will be arrested soon! I don’t think that is a possibility. Not because I never met in my life any of the Ergenekon suspects, or talked to them, but I know if I get arrested my sparring partner will rush to my aide and get me out immediately.
Having read all the messages a few times, I felt sorry NOT to have been unfair to this very distinguished community of liberal Muslims who are very talented in cursing (commenting) and threatening (warning) in excellent but vulgar English. They claim to be the people who follow a man who claims to be a man of peace. Either the Grand Hodja has failed to teach them well, or É But certainly they cannot not be allying civilizations with such sentiments and language, can they? All the same I am certain they should be hiding "that face of theirs" when they fake to the "Franks of power." After Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Davos tirade his Arab fans shouted out loud that he should be named the new caliph. Sorry lads, the position is not vacant. We already have a caliph although he resides in non-Muslim land.
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