Farmer ‘forced’ to leave town for not blessing funeral

TOKAT – Doğan News Agency

DHA Photo

A farmer from the Aegean coastal resort town of Bodrum migrated some 1,300 kilometers to Tokat province with his family and poultry after triggering local anger with his statement at a funeral.

Tahir Bice refused to give his blessing during his neighbor Osman Dağar’s funeral in 2012, claiming that Dağar, 73, had poisoned his poultry, from which he earned his living.

He said he had to leave the town due to local pressure because of his attitude at the funeral. He moved to his hometown, Çilehane village in Tokat, some 1,300 kilometers from Bodrum, with his family and poultry.

When the imam asked whether the crowd gave their blessing to Dağar, Bice said, “I object. I do not know him well. I do not make my rights helal to [Dağar].”

If one has rights over someone else – for instance if one is not paid back the money he lent – and does not make his rights helal, it is a great sin according to Islam. Bice, 52, claimed during the funeral that the ill neighbor had killed almost 600 of his chickens and ducks. “I told him and his children many times to pay me for my expenses, but he threatened to poison my animals again. I earned the living of my wife, who has cancer, and my three children with these animals,” Bice said at the funeral. The Bice family had been living in Bodrum for the past 20 years.