Imams already preach in Kurdish, says Turkey’s top imam

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate head Mehmet Görmez. AA Photo

Imams are already able to preach in any language understood by the attendees of the mosque, including Kurdish and Arabic, Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate head Mehmet Görmez has said, describing the exclusion of any language or ethnicity as “a crime against humanity and the maker of all humanity.”

Görmez said any language could be used to preach in mosques, adding that no language had the right to exclusively own religion.

“The representatives of religion can preach with comfort in the language understood by the people coming into the mosque, especially in rural areas,” Görmez said. “It is sad to treat such an ongoing practice as if it just appeared today.”

Having all languages in the mosque has never caused any problems in the past, and Kurdish people have previously been preached to in the Kurdish language, leading to no societal conflict, Görmez said, referring instead to the “psychological barriers of certain periods.”

The common language was Islam and it is a human duty not to let spoken languages perish, Görmez said.

“When we pray personally, along with the original verses, we use the language given to us by God, the language that we use all day. There is nothing wrong with that. If religion is universal, you cannot talk about a single language,” he said.