Dear ulama: Heaven is not your porn fantasy!
Visiting Denmark seven years after the Danish cartoon crisis, Professor Mehmet Görmez, head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, spoke these words of wisdom:
- We must further support non-Muslims living with us side by side… We must have even friendlier relations with our neighbors who write racist messages on mosque walls in the West.
- [Non-Muslim] minorities and their churches [in Muslim lands] are entrusted to Muslims.
- The [violent] incidents [targeting Christians] in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring are the biggest stain on Islamic civilization.
- We must grant freedom to the church in the East as much as we want freedom for the mosque in the West.
- Restrictions, humiliation and insults against the church should upset all of us [Muslims].
Professor Görmez is a Muslim theologian. But he is not the only one. Another well-known Muslim theologian is Ali Rıza Demirci, father of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) Beyoğlu, Istanbul, mayor, Ahmet Misbah Demircan. The elder Mr. Demircan’s popular blog features his “scientific” work published in volumes of books.
One of his masterpieces is the “Sexual Life According to Islam,” a two-volume book published in 1984. Here are some excerpts from that book which can be downloaded even today from Mr. Demircan’s popular blog:
- In heaven there will be no bachelors.
- Every man [residing in the lowest circle of heaven] will be given 72 women per day. A fully faithful Muslim will be given 100 virgins per day with whom he will have sex all day long. Women in heaven will become virgins immediately after having sex with men.
- Every man in heaven will be given the [sexual] power of 100 men.
- Every person in heaven will return to the age of 33.
- Women will be given to men who died in the name of religion.
- Men in heaven will have a permanent erection.
- Every man in heaven will have sex with his wife and angelic girls all day long.
I wanted to ask Mr. Demircan the ulama if women should be faithful Muslims only to enter heaven and “be given to men as sex slaves,” or if we pray for his or my or other people’s mothers, wives and sisters so that they go to heaven “for that!” Is this what Mr. Demircan really wishes for the female members of his family? I would not. And why will people in heaven return to the age of 33 and not 23? What about the faithful who died at the age of 8, 12, 18, 29 and went to heaven? Why would they have to age as a reward?
The trouble is not about the too visible discrepancy between the golden words of Mr. Görmez the ulama and the eccentric prophesies of Mr. Demircan the ulama. It is about the choice of the average pious Muslim: Will the faithful observe Mr. Görmez’s teachings or Mr. Demircan’s? Whose words would appeal more to the faithful? There is empirical evidence to guess.
Ironically, on the day the newsmakers reported Mr. Görmez’s words of knowledge, another news story told us which ulama even educated Turks would choose to listen to more.
A thousand people gathered in Edirne to form “a human chain of brotherhood,” in honor of the grandiose mosque in the city, Selimiye, led by Gov. Gökhan Sözer. Among the invitees was a priest representing the Bulgarian Orthodox Church who wanted to take the front line with the governor and the Muslim mufti of the city. The governor simply refused to let the priest in, citing “Bulgarian discrimination against Muslims in Bulgaria.”
And just yesterday the newspapers reported that the younger Mr. Demircan had sent a 1 million-Turkish Lira (approximately $575,000) fine to a Catholic church in Istanbul. The mayor promised corrective action, but the unlucky church’s priest had already asked the million dollar question: Would the municipality send the same fine to a mosque?
Apparently, Professor Görmez’s teachings do not appeal to Turkish officials. And there are no means to know if Mr. Demircan’s teachings would. But the possible truth just makes me laugh…