KEBABBLE Cleric falls from
grace (into the hotel pool) By
Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - Turkish
daily newspapers are on the whole written, edited
and produced by a liberal intelligentsia who are
secular in their thinking. They are very similar
to their Western counterparts and gladly indulge
themselves when the opportunity presents itself to
expose religious figures in flagrante.
Recently, they were handed a doozy of a
story when one of the former best friends of
Cuppeli Ahmet Hoca (translates as "Robed Teacher
Ahmet") decided to reveal a few family secrets.
Cuppeli
Ahmet Hoca is one of the
leading religious figures at the Ismailaga mosque
and community center in Fatih, Istanbul. The
mosque is a well-known focus for radical Islamic
thought and Ahmet is one of its chief preachers.
This is not the first time he has been in
the headlines. He first came to public prominence
in 1997 when a huge complex of buildings (known as
a kulliye) he had organized the illegal
building of on 20,000 square meters of land in
Beykoz was closed down. The buildings, which were
used for religious purposes, were seized after as
many as 30,000 people the government deemed
reactionary gathered there.
He was in the
limelight again after the huge earthquake in the
Izmit area in 1999 when he prepared a cassette for
his faithful congregation that insulted both the
government and the army. He was sentenced to just
under three years jail for this, and the reason
cited was that his cassette had provoked religious
hatred and encouraged division among the people.
He is also well known for his teachings,
which encourage people to give up furniture and
use floor cushions, to throw away their
televisions, not to participate in social events
where alcohol is present and not to swim in mixed
company, or even in male company if the men are
not covered up. He also preaches that one should
dress simply whatever one's personal wealth, and
that one's womenfolk should wear veils as well as
the traditional scarf. He has multiple wives and
believes that girls should not be educated at
school.
Imagine everyone's surprise last
week when Hurriyet newspaper printed pictures of
him swimming in just a pair of shorts with
bikinied women and riding on the back of a water
scooter while on vacation in Malta in 2004.
Throughout the course of the week the stories
multiplied and questions have been raised about
the Hoca's personal wealth and superstar behavior.
The "friend" with whom he traveled all over Europe
giving talks and selling religious cassettes
(ostensibly for his religious trust but apparently
for his personal gain) has revealed that they
always stayed in five-star hotels, including those
of the Sheraton, Hilton and Kempinski chains.
The same friend revealed that when he and
his wife visited the Hoca at home they discovered
that home was a US$2 million villa with outdoor
pool and luxury furniture. Upon seeing the way the
Hoca's wife was dressed in designer labels and
expensive shoes, his own wife demanded to know why
she had been subjected to wearing cheap goods
despite their own wealth.
The friend
recounted how the Hoca's glasses had gold-plated
Versace frames but that he tells his congregation
they are fakes and how at the Geneva airport the
Hoca bought his second wife a $16,000 Chopard
watch. So much for living the simple life!
The scandal has spread fast and, within a
day of the story appearing in Hurriyet, the
leading current-affairs programs on television
such as Arena were featuring special
reports with video footage of the Hoca on some of
his five-star vacations. Hoca tried desperately to
refute the claims that he had been swimming in
mixed company, but Hurriyet then printed photos on
its front page showing exactly this.
Cuppeli then claimed that he had never
looked at anyone in a bikini. Hurriyet and the
news have taken to playing footage of the Hoca
preaching in the mosque and explaining why Muslims
can't swim at the beach or in a public pool and
how even to swim in a single-sex pool is barred as
to see a man's naked torsos is against Islam.
It seems that one of our modern world's
greatest and most damaging accusations has been
thrown at the Hoca, that of being a hypocrite. A
hypocrite, to merit the description fully, must
fulfill four criteria: (1) He must advocate a
standard, (2) he should publicly apply that
standard to himself, (3) he must then fail to meet
that standard and (4) subsequently hide or deny
his failure.
Had he simply fallen short of
the standards that he had set himself he would
have created a media scandal, but what has really
whipped the liberal media into a frenzy is his
denial of his carnal behavior.
Without
doubt the Hoca's standing among his own
congregation will be severely affected because
while most people may theoretically agree that a
speaker's moral character is irrelevant to the
validity of his argument, in reality most of us
regard hypocrites as unworthy advocates.
Despite one of the world's most
translatable and widespread sayings being "Do as I
say, not as I do" and the fact that on the scale
of evils hypocrisy is a petty offense, hardly in
the same league as genocide, murder or rape, we
seem to find it unforgivable in public figures.
Cuppeli Ahmet Hoca is unlikely to recover his full
religious gravitas; maybe he will learn to lighten
up and not set his standards so ridiculously high.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish
descent, born and brought up in London. She moved
to Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full-time
since then.
