Turkey's top religious official slams Gülenists for exploiting religion

ANKARA

Turkey’s top religious official has slammed the Fethullah Gülen network for exploiting the Islamic religion in order to direct a social movement.

“The High Council of Religious affairs, which have examined FETÖ’s [Fethullahist Terrorist Organization] speeches, books and magazines, have revealed the background behind FETÖ’s infiltration plan,” Mehmet Görmez, head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, said yesterday as he announced the directorate’s report on the group. 

“It is a movement of exploitation of religion. Maybe we can find a way to learn a lesson from the past for the future. Work has been done for this purpose. This work has uncovered the background of the mindset of this movement,” Görmez said.

The report titled “FETÖ in its own language: An organized exploitation of religion,” was prepared after an intensive research on Gülen’s books and speeches.

“All the religious scholars, including me, are obliged to wake the hearts and minds of the believers against the dirty plans of the dark structures that appear to come from God. To remind the real principles of the Quran, religious tradition and sanity with a strong and erudite voice are the biggest duties of the scholars,” Görmez said.


Gülen is depicted as an extraordinary person

“Gülen had put a great and systematic effort to depict himself as an extraordinary personality. It preached the followers that Gülen is not an ordinary person, he is chosen by Allah to revive Islam,” said Görmez.
“Gülen has implied that he had been instructed by the Prophet Mohammed and referred to his followers as if he was getting orders from the prophet,” he added.

“Mystic concepts that were used by Islamic Sufis to express their personal experiences were exploited by Gülen and presented as divine messages directing a social movement,” he said, according to the report.

“For the head of FETÖ, Islamic verses are only instruments and signs. For him, nothing has a reality. The FETÖ leader has constructed the world for himself in which Allah is accessible and the Prophet is tactile,” Görmez said.

“FETÖ has propagated in order to penetrate into the minds of innocent children by using their need for shelter. It has constantly indoctrinated them,” he said.