The Leman provocation: anything but humour

Leman magazine, Turkey's Charlie Hebdo, just like the French magazine it imitates, has never held back from spewing its hatred, hostility and rancor toward Muslims on every occasion under the cloak of "humor." One can understand the Islamophobia, the hostility to Islam, of a French magazine, but Leman and its circle are a typical example for those who find it hard to understand the hatred of Islam of a magazine published in Turkey.

The more it pushes to the limit the bounds of freedom of expression and tolerance that humor enjoys all over the world, the less remains of it other than every sort of vulgarity, a low-grade, boorish vomit of emotion, a hooligan-like foul-mouthedness. That is why the magazine has never been regarded as a humor magazine.

Humor is, in fact, the zakat of intelligence, or something overflowing from it. When it derives from that intelligence, as satire, even the persons or segments it targets give it its due. In Leman magazine we have never, so far, come across a joke or a cartoon derived from, overflowing from intelligence, even for the sake of satirizing its opponents. The language it chooses to satirize its enemies or opponents is the cheapest and crudest level that murders humor in the name of humor.

It is, so to speak, something that could not even pass for a donkey's prank. The only thing you feel when you read it is a rancorous, angry and terrible hostility. A hostility from which, when it takes up our Prophet as its subject, you cannot expect a more refined imagination or line. The question, of course, is in whose name the Leman circle has adopted this hostility toward the Prophet and the people who follow him. Why this hostility, this anger, toward the Prophet who built the consciousness that makes these lands a homeland for those who live on them, and toward those who follow him? In this homeland where the adhans, whose testimony is the foundation of the religion, resound every day, the most important voice proclaimed is that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

What makes this homeland a homeland, what makes it sacred enough to die for, for Turks and for Muslims, is the instructions of that Prophet, the affection, belonging and loyalty to that Prophet for which one would sacrifice one's life. There is no joking about this. Indeed, this subject is exempt even from refined humor. There is always a chance that the matters humor enters will be watered down. People's attachment to the Prophet, their obedience to him, his being the messenger of God, and nothing relating to this can be a subject of humor, even of the refined kind.

Muslims hold their own Prophet above their own selves, above even their closest relatives, and in case of disagreement prefer the Prophet's word. No one can understand Muslims without understanding this relationship. Today, however backward Muslims may be, whatever their state in the world balances of power, they are bound to their Prophet with a love to the death.

In fact it is not that this is unknown. Everyone knows this, and it is precisely for this reason that it is the first material resorted to in attempts to provoke Muslims. It is also impossible that Leman magazine, with all its staff, does not know this. That is why we cannot think they did this provocation unknowingly.

No one can say it is a coincidence that on the very 32nd anniversary of the Sivas Madımak incident they set about scratching at the very same sensitivity that triggered that incident. This is not merely an act of involuntarily vomiting the hatred inside them toward our Prophet; it is an open provocation. Of course, knowing that it has this dimension, Muslims must be very careful, but those who commit these provocations must also not get away with what they have done.

Turning to the humor-and-ideology side of the matter, we are not at all surprised by the profile that emerged when the other posts of the person who made the cartoon in question came up on this occasion. An aggressive profile that makes no secret of being full of unimaginable rancor and hatred toward Islam, Muslims and Islamists. From this profile anything may come, but intelligent humor certainly does not. At most, filth like this comes out; whatever is in his own disgusting imagination is what spills over.

In an earlier X post, the same person used the words, "Islam is a stake that was forcibly driven into the Turks..." In many of his other posts he is seen making the same disgusting vulgarities against both Islam and Erdoğan. For instance, in one place, saying "There is no such thing as an oppressed Islamist... S... go away from this republic are Islamists on the streets who have not been told so...", he showed both what he understands by the Republic and what feelings and dreams of the future he harbors toward Muslims.

It is very clear that he feeds on the dream-world the occupying Crusader-Zionist mentality, which does not belong to this country, has been building for two hundred years about the people of this country. In front of you there is no political head. There is no personality with whom dialogue can be established, to whom one can talk, with whom one can converse in peace and brotherhood about the future of the country. There is a hostility that can think of the people of this country, its Muslims, only in terms of "expelling" them from this country.

The statement Leman magazine published against the reactions that followed this provocation is a response whose apology is greater than its offense, one that mocks people's intelligence. It tried to convince and feed people that that Muhammad was not the Muhammad we know. With this statement it did nothing but deepen the provocation further.

Let them do this; but what does CHP Chairman Özgür Özel accomplish by repeating verbatim these brazen statements of Leman magazine? What is he doing other than exposing the hostility to Islam and the Prophet in the CHP's genetics and reminding people who have forgotten them today?

Perhaps he is doing well. Because there are those who forget, there are those who do not know because they have never read, there are those who suppose that the CHP has changed. On this occasion, we hope those who forgot will remember, those who did not know will learn, and those who supposed will know.