The patience of a spider

"The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do. We don't lay the web to eat or consume them but to show them the way to their resurrection, to blow life into their dead bodies and souls, to give them a life," thus commanded Fethullah Gülen, the "master lord," in one of his sermons.

In one of modern political history’s best-selling lies Fethullahists have been working day and night to convince the West that Turkey’s real anti-Semites are more or less everyone apart from the Fethullahists themselves. That may be true. Last night in Atlantis a jinn told me that secularists and radical Islamists are anti-Semites while every Fethullahist is a modern day Oskar Shindler. I asked him for proof. He whispered my prickly column neighbor’s name and disappeared into an unknown.

Thus I dog-piled Mustafa Akyol’s recent op-eds. I am not going to go into his Gaza-fever articles like "Terrorism in the name of Judaism" (Jan. 24), or "You wonder why they hate you? Look at Gaza" (Jan. 3) in which Mr Akyol described how he talked to a group of 300 conservative Muslims in Istanbul and how even those who agreed that Hamas was subscribing to terrorist methods shouted out loud that "Israel is the real terrorist."

In a more recent column, "Anti-Semitism in Turkey: Myths and Facts (I)" (Feb. 12), an unusually agitated Mr Akyol was telling us something like "no, no we are not the anti-Semites, but they are!" in language that sounded like a naughty kid telling his teacher he had not broken the window and, in a low voice, informing on the classmate he hates the most. His proof? "Dozens of columns that appeared in the Islamic/conservative side of the Turkish media É which emphasized the need to distinguish between the State of Israel and the Jewish people." Good. I am sure that will do the trick and at the next after-prayer anti-Jewish demonstration Islamic/conservative Turks will chant slogans distinguishing between the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

In the same column, Mr Akyol quotes a prominent Islamic pundit, Ali Bulaç, as reminding that "while the Koran blames the Jews for some sins it reminds ’they are not the same,’ and that Muslims should respect non-Zionist Jews." Sadly, Mr Bulaç’s first line explains it all. And his second line was very generous of him: "You, Jews, if you want our respect, stop being Zionists!"

Mr Akyol admits that a categorical hatred of the Jews exists in the Islamic camp but claims that that can be observed only in the very marginal publications such as daily Vakit. Sadly, that "very marginal" publication is the darling of our "non-marginal" Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Remember, Mr Erdoğan has been calling his supporters to boycott Hürriyet, not Vakit. Instead, this "very marginal publication" has the privilege of being a regular invitee on Mr. Erdoğan’s private jet.

In another line, Mr Akyol argued that, "The secular camp in Turkey includes secular nationalists (Ulusalcılar, in Turkish) who are the proponents of all sorts of racism and xenophobia." That is true. But there is a problem with Mr Akyol’s intentions to tell us that one truth. In fact Mr Akyol’s argument is no different than saying, "The Islamic camp in Turkey includes terrorists who bombed synagogues and consulates and banksÉ" which is another truth. Just like not every Islamist is a terrorist, not all secular Turks are xenophobic.

And of course, the Fethullahists are not terrorists. Nor are they secretly piling up weapons caches to take to the streets and kill every Jew they find when the right time comes. The truth is, as almost always, somewhere between the two extremes. Fethullahists are smarter Islamists who resort to smarter weaponry (intellect, networking and taqiyya instead of guns and bombs) for the same end-goal: The long-sought victory of Islam on a global scale.

Both the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the Fethullahist movement take their roots in Islamism. They have a common goal, which is to advance political Islam, not Islam as a religion per se. But what is the difference between two political movements that basically pursue the same goal?

The answer will be their methodology. Whereas Mr. Erdoğan is more honest and outspoken in his views about Jewry, Fethullahists are more reserved to reveal their true feelings and believe that it would be quite unnecessary to make enemies during their holy march to victory. They have been indoctrinated by their master lord to be as patient as a spider.

That explains why an army of Fethullahists on both sides of the Atlantic have been privately telling their AKP comrades that they share Mr. Erdoğan’s feelings but that the grandiose show at Davos was an unnecessary act. What better cover than the miraculous word, "interfaith dialogue," could have been invented in order to instrument the impressive propaganda machine Fethullahists are running? Yes, they work hard. Yes, they are smart people. Yes, for the na?ve western intellectual, they can be very convincing. And yes, they are as patient as a spider.

We are probably not too far away from the moment of truth, the day when Turkey’s Islamists will be celebrating a bizarre victory, the day when, in the words of the master lord, "a nation that has accepted atheism, has accepted materialism, a nation accustomed to running away from itself, has come back riding on its horse."

Spiders and horses É when "that day" comes we will have to remember all kinds of animal jokes that we know. Especially the one about the scorpion who asks a frog for a ride to cross the river and convinces the hesitant frog with the very convincing argument that if it stings, they both would die. No, the scorpion will not bite for fun. It’s just the genes.