{"id":69948,"date":"2013-04-24T17:51:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T14:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=69948"},"modified":"2023-04-05T13:39:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T10:39:17","slug":"turkey-convicts-world-renowned-pianist-for-defaming-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/04\/24\/turkey-convicts-world-renowned-pianist-for-defaming-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Convicts World-Renowned Pianist for \u2018Defaming\u2019 Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 23, 2013\u00a0By\u00a0<\/span>Andrew Harrod<\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

\"1366101926990.cached\"A\u00a0Turkish court on April 15, 2013, convicted\u00a0world-renowned pianist\u00a0Fazil Say\u00a0under\u00a0Article 216(3)\u00a0of the Turkish Penal Code.\u00a0 This article punishes \u201c[a]nyone who openly denigrates the religious values of a part of the population\u201d with imprisonment of six months to a year.\u00a0 Say\u2019s case highlights once again the limits to free speech in Muslim-majority countries including Turkey, often touted in the past as an example of Islamic faith coexisting with freedom.\u00a0 The world as well should note this clear warning about ongoing Muslim assaults upon free speech internationally.<\/p>\n

The composer and pianist Say, who has played for the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Symphony, and other prominent orchestras, had made comments deemed offensive by various Muslims on his Twitter account.\u00a0 In one tweet, Say mocked a call to prayer measured by him as only 22 seconds in length.\u00a0 \u201cWhy such haste?\u201d Say tweeted.\u00a0 \u201cHave you got a mistress waiting or a raki on the table?\u201d he asked in reference to a traditional alcoholic drink made with aniseed falling under Islam\u2019s alcohol prohibition.\u00a0 Other Say tweets cited by the charges included one in which he questioned whether heaven was a tavern or brothel on the basis of a\u00a0verse\u00a0attributed to the famous medieval poet\u00a0Omar Khayyam.\u00a0 Say, who was in southern Germany at the time of the verdict for a concert, received a\u00a010-month suspended sentence\u00a0that he will not have to serve unless he commits the same offense in the next five years.<\/p>\n

In response,\u00a0Sevim Da\u011fdelen, a Turkish-descent member of the German parliament and international affairs spokesperson for her Left party (Die Linke<\/i>),\u00a0condemned the verdict in a press release.\u00a0\u00a0Da\u011fdelen had previously attended Say\u2019s trial openingon October 18, 2012, (later postponed until February 18, 2013) and had drawn international attention to Says cause.\u00a0 The press release called the verdict a \u201cscandal\u201d of the \u201cErdo\u011fan-Regime\u201d and its \u201cAKP justice\u201d in reference to Turkey\u2019s Prime Minister\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan\u00a0and his\u00a0AKP\u00a0party.\u00a0 She demanded an immediate end to German participation in Turkish European Union (EU) accession talks in order not \u201cto reward the AKP for its running amok against democracy and human rights.\u201d\u00a0 Ironically, Da\u011fdelen\u2019s party has\u00a0its origins, in part, in the\u00a0successor to East Germany\u2019s Communists, the Party of Democratic Socialism (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus<\/i>\u00a0or PDS).<\/p>\n

For Da\u011fdelen, Say\u2019s conviction along with Turkish imprisonment of \u201cthousands of political prisoners showed that Turkey is on the way to an authoritarian Islamist repression state.\u201d\u00a0 Da\u011fdelen is not alone in her worries, as indicated by a report on Turkey by Amnesty International available\u00a0online.\u00a0 Among things, the report criticizes Article 216 and lists Say\u2019s various tweets in English translation. \u00a0\u201cCriminal prosecutions targeting dissenting opinions,\u201d AI\u2019s introduction to the report notes, \u201crepresent one of Turkey\u2019s most entrenched human rights problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet various Turks expressed their opposition to the decision.\u00a0 While respecting a \u201ccourt decision\u201d, the Turkish minister for culture and tourism, \u00d6mer \u00c7elik, stated at the London Book Fair that he \u201cwould not wish anyone to be put on trial for words that have been expressed. This is especially true of artists and cultural figures.\u201d \u00a0Many in Turkey, meanwhile, reposted the contentious Khayyam verse.<\/p>\n

Say\u2019s case has implications beyond his native Turkey.\u00a0 Erdo\u011fan has on several occasions called\u00a0\u201cIslamophobia\u201d a \u201ccrime against humanity\u201d\u00a0and has correspondingly called for this \u201ccrime\u2019s\u201d\u00a0legal prohibition.\u00a0 During the globalInnocence of Muslims<\/i>\u00a0film controversy, for example, he advocated on September 16, 2012, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, \u201cinternational legal regulations against attacks on what people deem sacred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erdo\u011fan\u2019s Turkish compatriot,\u00a0Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, meanwhile, is just finishing his term as secretary general of the\u00a0Organization of Islamic Cooperation\u00a0(OIC), a grouping of 56 Muslim-majority states (including Turkey) and the Palestinian Authority.\u00a0 There he has overseen a\u00a0campaign for Erdo\u011fan\u2019s \u201cinternational regulations\u201d with respect to Islam\u00a0now over 14 years old.\u00a0 Those around the world wondering what would happen if the OIC achieved the goals of its \u201cIslamophobia\u201d campaign should remember the Say case.<\/p>\n

Da\u011fdelen has expressed opposition to Turkey in the EU, but Europeans and others would do well to ponder the implications of Say\u2019s case for Muslim immigration.\u00a0 Along with their various allies, Muslims with ancestry from Turkey and other Muslim-majority countries have already shown themselves quite capable of using Europe\u2019s preexisting hate speech and blasphemy laws tosuppress criticism of Islam\u00a0and its adherents.\u00a0 Absent a modification or abolition of these laws, the continuing and growing presence of Muslim immigrants in Europe and countries like Canada will only offer more opportunities for Muslims to register legally their offense at speech like Say\u2019s.\u00a0 Individuals, for example, like Say who would pointedly express their atheism to Muslims or, perhaps thinking of Say, condemn Islam for\u00a0some of its interpretations prohibiting music, should beware.\u00a0 The next prosecution for speech criticizing Islam might not be in some foreign country far away, but in your neighborhood, perhaps even involving you.<\/p>\n

This article was sponsored by\u00a0The Legal Project, an activity of the\u00a0Middle East Forum.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 23, 2013\u00a0By\u00a0Andrew Harrod A\u00a0Turkish court on April 15, 2013, convicted\u00a0world-renowned pianist\u00a0Fazil Say\u00a0under\u00a0Article 216(3)\u00a0of the Turkish Penal Code.\u00a0 This article punishes \u201c[a]nyone who openly denigrates the religious values of a part of the population\u201d with imprisonment of six months to a year.\u00a0 Say\u2019s case highlights once again the limits to free speech in Muslim-majority countries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":69949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[8197],"class_list":["post-69948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-fazil-say"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}