The community's mut'a fantasies

There was a rumor that I kept ignoring every time I heard it, dismissing it as nonsensical gossip. On social media, bot accounts systematically keep repeating this rubbish of a rumor. In fact, even before it became this widespread, I was occasionally asked, in a provocative mode, "what do I think about mut'a" by robot personalities on social media whom I did not know and had no way of knowing. Since there is no real person in front of me, we say it is best to brush off the provocations like the buzzing of a fly, of course.

The rumor systematically insinuates that the Prime Minister, Beşir Atalay, Hakan Fidan and Ahmet Davutoğlu go to Iran frequently, and that the reason for this is that they have contracted mut'a marriages there.

These rumors, which we did not take seriously because nonsense admits of no interpretation, began after a while to be presented as the determining factor of Iran-Turkey policy. Somewhere I read that Beşir Atalay was forced to state in response to these rumors that he had not gone to Iran at all in the last two years. Ahmet Davutoğlu's trips to Iran take place before the eyes of the world, accompanied by a large number of bodyguards and on an extremely intensive schedule. While we wrap the subject in humor, asking when on earth he went and contracted a mut'a marriage, we cannot help wondering whether there are gullible fools who believe such rumors too.

And what do we see next? We learn that at the end of February in Istanbul the community's publishing group organized, on top of all this, a symposium titled "The Protection of the Family and the Mut'a Fitna." The symposium, announced by the community media with great seriousness and pomp, and a great many high-ranking professors were able to present papers as if doing very serious work, as if it were a very important problem on Turkey's agenda.

Turkey has become an incredibly strange and many-voiced country. Whether the fact that a symposium with such content could be held in Turkey is something to be proud of in terms of the diversity of our academics, you decide that too. Or should the question rather be asked as: when did the academics who came together to interpret away this rubbish infiltrate the academy?

I am not talking about political or philosophical views, of course; I am talking about academic intelligence and quality. When we look a little at the content, we see that the subject of mut'a has increasingly become a matter of fantasy among members of the community.

Fantasy is, in fact, a form of projection that gives away the desires of those who attribute certain deeds to people, rather than being about the people to whom those deeds are attributed.

The alliances the community has recently formed in different places with all the parties, from the CHP and MHP to the BBP and even the BDP, are like mut'a relationships. None of them looks like it will become a lasting relationship. All of them are temporary relationships based on a particular partnership of interests. Into these short-lived great alliances, which have made even the great majority of community members dizzy and which they watch in astonishment, you can also add TÜSİAD and many writers of the Doğan Media group, along with a nameless heap of robots.

What mut'a marriage is and what its place is in Ja'fari jurisprudence is, of course, a subject, and it is not surprising that theologians devote some attention to it amid so much academic interest. But let us not deceive one another: the subject has been reduced to a cliché handled at the level of gossip and rumor in order to otherize Shiism, and this cliché discourse has been attempted to be pinned on AK Party politicians. Meanwhile it is not even noticed that a discourse of hatred is being cultivated beneath the surface against Shiites, against our Ja'fari citizens, even against our Alevi citizens. Perhaps it is noticed; what intentions of theirs can we be sure of anymore?

When talking about Iran or Shiism, there is in fact no categorical difference between tying the matter to mut'a with street-ruffian-level gossip and the "the candle went out" rumors about Alevis, which are a cause of justified anguish. Both are produced as part of a hate discourse of the same level.

Meanwhile, when considered together with the Gülen community's recent discovery of Alevism, another dimension of ugliness stands out. Earlier, the mosque-cemevi project had provoked the protest movements of many Alevis and led them to pour into the streets. But interestingly, the target of the protests was not the community that owned the project, but the government, which had nothing at all to do with it.

When Fethullah Gülen, in a most unusual way, published a message of condolence for Berkin Elvan, he gave strange signals by emphasizing the child's Alevism for no reason that was needed, and lent support to the street, which is prone to violence. Whatever the meaning of these messages to Alevis, only a great deal of ill intent and will could bring together the hate discourses that reduce Shiism to mut'a-ism.

Look at the human type that the Gülen movement, which claims to raise a moral "Golden Generation," has ended up raising after all. A level of gossip that does not refrain from slandering honorable people merely in expectation of political gain, that recklessly throws mud at people's honor.

I do not know what kind of golden generation is raised at this level, but one does not need to be a scholar to know at least this much; it is a measure of morality that every Muslim should know: the testimonies of people who voice gossip at this level with such recklessness become invalid for life. No word of such people can be trusted. Let them just stay in their fantasy worlds.