A ban on happiness from the Diyanet

In this country, people are unhappy, weary… People are hopeless, tired…

They are in search of gathering new and modest hopes from illuminated streets that will gladden hearts, decorated pine trees, and small gifts. Because New Year's is coming. Every year carries a new hope in its saddlebag.

“Who knows?” says the citizen, “maybe this year will pass more comfortably... Let me buy a cheap toy for my child, let me hang a string of lights on my window. Let me bring some happiness to my child, who hangs their head, from shop windows adorned with Santa Claus decorations. Let their face smile, let them be joyful…”

How is that possible!!! The Diyanet is issuing a Friday Sermon.

It is putting those who seek happiness in their place. “Aspiring to figures remaining from non-Islamic traditions that have no connection with our religion and our customs, dressing like them, and distributing gifts like them is contrary to our faith and is wrong.”

Oh, my!

Thus, gift-giving and clothing styles are placed in the seat of honor on the list of sins.

I wonder, does this clothing style apply to men as well? Just out of curiosity, does this message extend to the President, who wears suits and ties?

However, the Diyanet does not stop there; it even lectures the Christian world: “The birth of a Prophet (Jesus) who invited people to truth and justice cannot be celebrated in a way that is contrary to the values he brought.”

Our Diyanet has become the Diyanet of all religions, and we didn't even know it. I wonder if this sermon showed the right path to the Pope as well? One cannot help but feel concerned for Christian countries.

The lecture continues: “Therefore, any kind of entertainment and behavior that does not comply with the measures of halal and haram and that exceeds the boundaries of privacy is a sin.”

However, we have not yet reached the most striking part of the sermon. The Diyanet says;

“Exchanging gifts with products sold by those who support the killers of the innocent is a burden so heavy that it would make the bones of all our martyrs, especially our Gaza martyrs, ache.”

Now let's pause here; it is apparently a heavy burden to buy products from Western countries, especially the USA.

That's fine, but one might ask: didn't you allow everything from the water we drink, the cheese, biscuits, olive oil, meat, and chicken we eat, to the soap and toothpaste we use, our banks, our oil companies, and our communication and technology companies—all our local brands—to be sold to foreigners? What is going on!

When not even local shoes or local fabric are produced in Turkey, what kind of fatwa is this?

Or are you trying to burden the public with the sin of the goods allegedly sent to Israel secretly while the Gaza War continues?

Or are you making a reference to the President's very esteemed wife, who had a famous handbag store in New York closed down to shop for a bag worth tens of thousands of dollars? Shame, such a shame!

So you are saying, “Let's kill two birds with one stone. Let's both clear our names and circle our people to consider their happiness a sin and curse this New Year's custom,” is that it?

Look, dear sermonizers of the Diyanet, you cannot make the waters flow backward. You cannot steal the happiness of this people with your fundamentalist approaches and the superstitions you present as religion. You cannot darken the tolerance of Islam with your narrow and oppressive value judgments. You cannot put a mortgage on the minds of those who listen to this sermon by making them feel sinful and by spreading fear. Those days are gone…

This nation has internalized the 100-year-old secular republic. 73% of our people are happy to live in a secular country. They also believe that while living in a secular country, they have the freedom to fulfill all the requirements of their religion.

Are you aware that you are losing the millions who are happy to live the “Turkish Islam” in order to make concessions to radical Islamists?

Become the “Diyanet of the Republic,” make peace with the true Islam while there is still time, and spread love and happiness, not fear. Embrace our nation now... Embrace them so that the New Year may open the path to social peace and hope!