Gülen's curse was misquoted, misinterpreted, GYV chief says

Mustafa Yeşil, chairman of the Journalists and Writers Foundation's (GYV) executive board, in response to criticisms targeting prominent Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, said the curse uttered by Gülen did not have a direct reference and was poorly comprehended and highly manipulated by some who repeated it.

"No reference to an institution person or group can be found in the curse by Fethullah Gülen. Some circles and the ruling party officials confused it with wishing bad things on particular people," Yeşil said.

He further explained that the circles who misinterpreted the curse and manipulated it have no good intention in making such manipulative interpretations of Gülen's speech, accusing them of attempting to create hatred towards the scholar and the Hizmet movement he inspired. Such an approach cannot be deemed an innocent one while Gülen cursed no one in particular, Yeşil added.

Gülen's exact words spoken on Saturday, the fifth day of the graft investigation that has rocked the country, are as follows: “If those who go after these negative things... I don't know who they are... If those who go after these [corruption allegations] because it is essential for the law as well as the system, for the religion as well as democracy and if they [police officials] … have done things that are contrary to the spirit of the religion… and they're counting us in so that I will also refer to us… if they have done things that are contrary to the spirit of the religion, if things they have done are contrary to the fundamental disciplines of the Quran, if it is against the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, if it is against Islamic law, against modern law, against the accepted rules of democracy today... then may God bury us and them into the earth, bring fire to their houses, ruin their homes. But if this is not the case, those who don't see the thief but go after those trying to catch the thief, who don't see the murder but try to defame others by defaming innocent people -- may God bring fire to their houses, ruin their homes, break their unity, keep their feelings [wishes] within their chests, block their path, prevent them from being anything.”

“If you pay enough attention to the speech delivered by Gülen on Saturday, he included himself in the curse,” Yeşil said. He added that the conditional curse also targeted those who carried out the anti-graft operation and whom Gülen said he does not know personally. "The whole curse is conditional, with its addressee not specified, starting with ‘if,' which means carefully avoiding misunderstandings. The circles which had difficulty in apprehending his words chose to distort his curse with claims saying: 'The scholar betrayed the Muslims. He betrayed the government, as well as innocent people' -- which is something that Gülen could never do. He would never curse a human being, let alone Muslims."

Yeşil concluded his speech by drawing attention to the point that Gülen put his heart into every good deed of the Hizmet movement, and so could never say something that would hurt Muslims.

Punlished on Today's Zaman, 24 December 2013, Tuesday

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