This unpleasant story persists. Islamists, citing the hadith – a dubious source of Prophet Mohammed’s sayings written 200 years after his death and on which Islamist scholars have never agreed for 14 centuries — defend their lust for underage girls. [Here is a long list of Turkish Islamist practices of pedophilia in the past years.]
Most recently, in November, Turkey was shocked at news that a prominent Islamic sheik, the leader of a religious order fiercely devoted to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had married off his six-year-old daughter to a 29-year-old disciple. Six! The girl had been forced into sex and became a mother at 14. She complained to the prosecutor’s office, but Erdogan’s authorities apparently did not want to bother the sheik.
As she became an adult, she collected evidence of abuse, made it public, and only then the judiciary took action. Initially the court decided to try the suspects without detention, but under huge public pressure, the court detained both the father and husband. The father, in a statement, said that he was answerable only to Allah, not to a court.
Turkish basketball team Fenerbahce raises Greek banner in support of train accident victims (photo)
At the first court hearing in January, loyalists of the Hiranur sect gathered in front of the court building “to protest the legal proceedings against their sheik.” In defense of the girl’s father, they shouted, “Allahu akbar [Allah is the greatest].” At the same hearing, the court ordered a “secrecy and media ban” on future proceedings. The trial was adjourned to February 27.
Diyanet, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, an office under Erdoğan’s authority, shocked the nation once again when it issued an Islamic fatwa (religious opinion) shortly after the worst disaster in modern Turkey’s history: a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey’s southeast, as well as Syria, and that killed nearly 50,000 people and injured more than 100,000.
Read more: Gatestone Institute
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