Tag: Eid-Al-Adha

The Istanbulian: Istanbul’s Grand Mosque and Mosque-Free Athens

It’s another bayram, Festival of Sacrifice, at my favorite Istanbul landmark, Süleymaniye Mosque.

This year, it’s a more special day for the city; because the renovation of the mosque has been finally completed after three years. Until today, I have been guiding several of my foreign friends to Süleymaniye, only to show the exterior of the mosque and a small portion of the interior. As the renovation, which is the most comprehensive in 457-year old history of the mosque, is completed now, Süleymaniye is once again a must-see landmark for all tourists.

Süleymaniye is a massive symbol of humbleness and it is not a contradiction.

Sinan the Great Architect built this temple in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent. The construction was completed a bit later than it was planned. So the great Ottoman sultan was initially angry. One day, he went to the construction site and saw Sinan, smoking a water pipe beneath the huge dome. He lost his temper, asked Sinan why he was enjoying his time while the mosque was still not completed. Sinan was calm. “I’m testing the acoustics, my sultan,” he said, signaling another instance of his genius.

The sultan cooled down, but he got angry again when he learned that the Shah of Persia had sent some diamonds as a contribution to the slowed-down construction. It was a clever insult from the Shah. So the Sultan crushed all the diamonds of Shah and put them into the cement of the mosque. They say that this is why one of the minarets of the mosque still shines during sunsets.

Such anecdotes about a unique civilization can make a person feel good, whether he sees these buildings as houses of God or just human-made architectural structures. Today’s Europe should comprehend it as well. Losing ancient landmarks, mosques or churches or aqueducts, is a loss for humanity; because they all have such stories, history. Since Andalusia and Ottoman, Islam belonged to Europe, too, as German President Christian Wulff has recently observed.

On the other hand, as I’ve written before, there are no mosques anymore in Athens, the Greek capital which was an Ottoman city for centuries. Festival of Sacrifice is not a day to make any kind of criticism, so I won’t criticize the Greek politicians who demolished the Ottoman heritage in the past. However, it is a good time to say something about the future.

How come can the Greek government still ban the construction of mosques in Athens? Why does the European Union let them to do so? Would Brussels agree the full membership of another Turkey that would demolish all churches and ban their construction?

Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s EU negotiator, was in the European Parliament today to accept a prize for his government’s performance on expanding religious freedom. As you know, I dislike his Islamist government, but Bagis pointed out the right direction in the right time. He said that he was in Athens the previous day and he added: “I had to come to Brussels earlier, in order to participate in the bayram prayer in a mosque here. Why? Because in Athens, they don’t have a mosque and thousands of Muslims pray in the streets.”

All in all, if the European Union insists to remain as a Christian club, we will all see that it will not be European, nor union anymore. The first quality requires you to be civilized and the second one requires you to be tolerant.

via The Istanbulian: Istanbul’s Grand Mosque and Mosque-Free Athens.

November 17, 2010
Policemen banned nationalists’ namaz at Hagia Cathedral

Members of Alperen Ocaklari organization having close ties with the Turkish Great Union party tried to conduct namaz at Hagia Sophia Cathedral during Qurban Bayram, Islamic feast.

According to the Turkish Milliyet newspaper, being aware of this initiative Istanbul police surrounded the cathedral at 5:00 a.m. Members of the Islamist nationalist organization gathered at the cathedral not being able to enter it. Namaz was conducted outside of the church.

via Policemen banned nationalists’ namaz at Hagia Cathedral | Armenia News – NEWS.am.

November 17, 2010
Muslim Holiday Eid al-Adha Begins With Sacrificial Lambs

ISTANBUL (Nov. 16) — Two Turkish men seized a struggling lamb from a crowded pen and dragged it by its front feet so it was walking on its hind legs to the corner of a parking lot here. They then held the lamb down and one of the men slit the kicking lamb’s throat with a short, sharp knife. Next, they sliced off the lamb’s head and skin and finally cut the meat into parts, which were put into plastic bags that were carried off by a satisfied customer in a denim jacket.

Maxim Shubovich, AP People choose sheep for sacrifice to celebrate the Eid al-Adha at a market in the village of Ak-Bata outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on Tuesday. Muslims throughout the world celebrate Eid al-Adha by slaughtering sheep and cattle in remembrance of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son.

This ritual of slaughtering of lambs and also cows, goats and other animals is happening across Turkey and many other countries in the region today as the Muslim world begins the four-day Eid al-Adha, the festival of the sacrifice. The purchase and sacrifice of animals is a tradition inspired by a story from the Koran that many Christians might also remember from the Old Testament.

Abraham, who is known as a prophet to Muslims and is considered to be the forefather of Jews and Christians, is preparing to sacrifice his son to God. At the last moment, an angel appears to tell him he should instead sacrifice a ram and Abraham’s son is saved, his devotion to God proved.

In Turkey the festival is commonly known as Bayram. Many people return to their hometowns to visit with family members or take vacations. In Istanbul alone there are more than 480 official slaughtering points.

“Among Muslim countries, Turkey has the highest observance of the slaughter ritual,” Turkish theologian Ihsan Eliacik told the local newspaper Hurriyet Daily News.

Some estimate that more than a million animals will be slaughtered this year in Turkey. Though it is illegal to do outside the official areas, some people still slaughter the animals themselves on the street or in their backyards, sometimes even in their balconies.

The tradition also includes giving away some of the meat to people who cannot afford animals of their own.

Charity toward the poor is common in Muslim countries and one of the five principal tenets of Islam. Turkey is extending this charity further with individuals making donations of meat to impoverished people in other Muslim countries, part of the country’s increasingly far-ranging foreign policy. Organizations such as Cansuyu even let Turks avoid the messy sacrificing and allow them to pay for meat to be given to Muslim families across the world.

Donations to Pakistan, Asia and Africa are $136 and donations to the West Bank and Balkan countries are $239. Turkey is $307 and Gaza $341.

The IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, which sponsored the now-infamous flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza this past summer, is another organization that delivers donated meat for Bayram to people outside of Turkey.

“Bayram conduces us to go to all these different countries. It is really difficult to afford all these organizational costs, but Bayram is like our ships to go and see these places,” Salih Bilici, a spokesman for the organization, told AOL News.

Bilici said IHH had received 33,000 donations for this year’s Eid. The donations will be sent to the poor and disadvantaged in the different countries were IHH works.

“Besides, this Bayram is very important for Muslims because it brings us together and promotes the fraternity and solidarity,” he added. “The more Turkey develops, the more civil society strengthens and expands. Turkey is more developed and its civil society is more progressive than other Muslim countries.”

aolnews

November 17, 2010
Philanthropy as practiced in Islam

GÜL DEMİR & NIKI GAMMISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Charity in Islam takes many forms. It can even be the meat and skin of an animal sacrificed during the Feast of the Sacrifice holiday

This picture depicts a chief physician in his robes at one of the hospitals in Istanbul during the Ottoman era. The development of the Muslim trust served to advance education at the same time that it offered health care and food for the needy.

Giving to the poor and less fortunate is nothing new. It may be as old as mankind. Even institutionalizing it isn’t new and forms of it such as trusts and endowments are known as far back as the time of Zoroaster (11th or 10th century B.C.) in present-day Iran.

The rise of Islam presented a challenge in the need to find tools for society based on the Quran. There are a few lines in the Muslim holy book that refer to giving.

“And be steadfast in your prayer and pay charity; whatever good you send forth for your future, you shall find it with God, for God is well aware of what you do” (Quran 2:110). “Those who bestow their wealth in the way of God are like the grain of corn that sprouts seven ears, a hundred grains in every ear. So God multiplies for those whom he will” (Quran 2:263).

“Whatever good you do surely God has knowledge of it. Those who expend their wealth night and day, openly or secretly, their reward awaits them with their Lord” (Quran 2:275). “You will not attain true piety until you voluntarily give of that which you love and whatever you give, God knows of it” (Quran 3:86).

Following on what is said in the Quran, charity can only be given in the form of money if that money has been lawfully earned. As one scholar has pointed out, there’s no concept of robbing the rich to pay the poor as one sees in the western concept of Robin Hood.

The concept of ownership of wealth in Islam is that all wealth, after necessary personal and family expenses, belongs to God. It is up to the individual to decide how much of this excess wealth he should give back to the cause of God; if he or she does not give some of it, then it is claimed by Satan. Similarly all land belonged to the political ruler who could give it and reclaim it as he saw fit. One could argue that the Ottoman sultan as the caliph or highest religious figure in the empire had the right to claim it for his own.

Philanthropy thus was for God alone and mankind had the duty to carry it out but not for the sake of how he would look in God’s eyes. That would be tantamount to trying to bribe God through good works into granting the donor eternal life.

Over the centuries, two types of Islamic charity have arisen. One is zakah or zakat and is one of the five main elements of Islam enjoined on Muslims everywhere. It refers to an obligatory donation to charity and is something like 2.5 percent of a person’s net worth and has to be donated every year on the first day of Ramadan or one of the ensuing days of that holiday. However, according to Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, this need not be at any specific date or time of the year. The only stipulation is that a whole lunar year passes since the money was acquired. The other form of Islamic charity is sadaqah, or voluntary charity, which depends on need and the amount of excess wealth.

Turks today don’t give zakat as they believe that they are giving it in the form of taxes. Times really have changed. For the really religious person however, he may still donate part of his earnings but perhaps to a charitable foundation of his choice instead.

The development of the Muslim trust or vakıf (trust foundation) served to advance education and scholarship at the same time that it offered health care and food for the needy. It also represented patronage and a way of helping rulers who quite frequently were military conquerors find favor with the masses they ruled. For instance after the tenth century virtually all of the rulers were of Turkish origin in Persian, Arab and Byzantine countries. They needed the loyalty of organized groups who might be willing to make common cause with them and this became the academics and the mystic orders for the most part and especially among the Ottoman Turks.

In Istanbul, the greatest trusts were those set up by the sultans and centered around the imperial mosques. Government officials were also involved in such building projects although on a lesser scale. These started with the mosque built by Fatih Sultan Mehmed which was surrounded by one and two story buildings that housed schools starting with the primary grades through the equivalent of university. There also were hospitals and hospices, a soup kitchen, pharmacy, library and other types of services. Evliya Çelebi, the 17th century travel writer, speaks of the complex services for the poor, the sick, the homeless, the wayfarer and the mentally ill. [For a much more complete view of the Fatih complex and other such complexes, see Istanbul Şifahaneleri, the Sifahnes of Istanbul that has just been published by the Istanbul Culture Corp.]

This year, as usual, the Turkish Aviation Association, or THK, is appealing to everyone to remember that the skins of any slaughtered animal have to be donated by law to it. Since the skins can be sold, the THK has had difficulties in the past in combating people who drive around in trucks illegally collecting skins. The THK website as well this year states that it will not participate in the ritual slaughter of animals outside of Turkey by proxy. The money that it earns from providing such a service in Turkey is distributed as follows: 50 percent to the Social Assistance and Support Foundation Ministries, four percent to the Turkish Red Crescent, three percent to the Social Services and Children’s Protection Association, three percent to the Turkish Religious Affairs Foundation and 40 percent to the THK. The organization for example has over the years been able to distribute nearly half a million pieces of meat to needy families.

The Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate in contrast has suggested that rather than purchase an animal here, people wanting to perform a charitable act ought to send money to specially designated bank accounts. From there it would be transferred to Pakistan where it would be used to help the victims of this year’s disastrous flooding purchase animals for sacrifice.

Given the uncertainties caused by the global economic crisis, it will be interesting to see how charitable people in Turkey are this year. One hopes for the best.

November 16, 2010
Turkish vegetarians call for animal rights during Kurban Bayram holiday

ERİSA DAUTAJ ŞENERDEMISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Vegetarianism has been practiced since ancient times for ethical reasons, health concerns, and recently for economic and environmental ones. Hürriyet photo

Many vegetarians in Turkey find themselves in a tough spot this week, torn between their religious and dietary practices as their countrymen sacrifice animals to mark the Kurban Bayram (Feast of the Sacrifice) holiday.

“Even members of the Vegetarians Club in Istanbul sacrifice animals for Kurban Bayram,” Ebru Arıman, the group’s chairwoman, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

The holiday, which traditionally involves slaughtering a sheep or cow as a way of honoring God, does not only create qualms among vegetarians, Arıman added. She said even people who normally eat meat sometimes oppose the ritual sacrifice of animals due to physical and psychological pain the livestock experience.

“Although sacrificing will keep being practiced on religious grounds, one must make sure this is not turned into a painful process,” Berfin Melikoğlu, an ethics professor at Ondokuz Mayıs University’s Veterinary Faculty in the Black Sea province of Samsun, told the Daily News. Calling animal welfare essential, she said sheep or cows should be treated well before and during the sacrifice. In addition, she said, the slaughtering “must be done out of children’s sight” in order not to create emotional or psychological harm.

“Looking it at from an animal-rights point of view, I personally believe [animals’] lives must not be taken through sacrificing,” Seçil Aracı, a vegetarian and a philosophy Ph.D. candidate at Boğazici University in Istanbul, told the Daily News. She agreed with Melikoğlu that if people really believe they have to sacrifice animals to meet their religious obligations, it must be done properly, causing a minimum level of physical or psychological pain.

Though the ritual slaughtering during the Kurban Bayram holiday has become controversial, some believe the story behind the tradition actually highlights the importance of animals. The holiday commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, who gave him a ram to sacrifice instead. “Thus, sacrificing an animal is as dear as sacrificing one’s own child, as interpreted in the thesis of Adil Bor, a professor at Haseki Theological Education Center in Istanbul,” Aracı said.

Turkish vegetarians such as Aracı are not only focused on the Kurban Bayram holiday, but also fighting throughout the year for the rights of animals, that they say are often mistreated in industrial farms before they end up on dinner tables.

“In my childhood, I believed that animals have rights too, but I did not know how far this notion could be extended,” Aracı told the Daily News. She decided to become a vegetarian four years ago, after her research for her master thesis showed her how animals were treated in factory farms. “I had doubts in the beginning as to whether I could survive without eating meat,” she said, adding that no excuse was enough to clear her conscience about the terrible treatment animals receive in such facilities.

According to Aracı, people have been eating the meat of animals for a very long time, without even questioning the fact that animals are as aware of their existence as human beings are of theirs. Animals have cognitive abilities that allow them to build social relations among themselves and with people, Aracı said. “Even the concept of grand-parenting exists in cows,” she added.

Even on farms that are considered “modern,” animals experience a lot of psychological and physical violence, said Karanfil Soyhun, a philosophy professor at Boğaziçi University. She told the Daily News in a recent interview that they suffer broken bones, are injected with hormones to make them grow more than normal and experience pain during the milking process. Soyhun has been a lacto-vegetarian – someone who consumes no animal products other than milk – for about three years and said she was planning to soon quit consuming milk and milk products to protest the treatment of animals at dairy farms.

“Eating animals is a luxury,” Soyhun said, adding that although most people believe eating meat is essential for their health, many studies show the opposite to be true. “Sometimes [eating meat] can even be harmful for our health,” she said.

Turkish doctors generally share the common view that eating meat is essential, Arıman told the Daily News, adding that she has been a vegetarian for five years and has been healthy the entire time. “Although the variety of food is more limited for vegetarians, we can get all nourishment necessary for a healthy life from vegetables,” she said, adding that Turkish doctors should be more aware in this regard.

Vegetarianism has been practiced since ancient times not only for ethical reasons, but due to nutritional and health concerns, and recently for economic and environmental ones as well. “Raising animals [for food] is one of the main factors that cause global warming,” Soyhun said, noting the contribution of factory farms to climate-changing emissions. According to a 2006 study by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide, and modern practices of raising animals for food contribute on a “massive scale” to air and water pollution, land degradation, climate change and loss of biodiversity.

In addition, Aracı said, raising animals for food is not economically efficient and its elimination would significantly contribute to reducing global poverty. “We [consume meat] thinking it tastes good, without considering the economic rationale behind it,” she said, adding that limiting meat consumption would allow resources to be reallocated to resolve poverty issues all over the globe.

November 16, 2010
Istanbul animal bazaar overrun ahead of Feast of the Sacrifice

With the Kurban Bayram holiday this week, many people across Turkey are shopping for sacrificial beasts to give thanks, in turn then sharing their bounty with neighbors and people in need. In an effort to clean up the activities, an Istanbul district has set up an animal bazaar and slaughtering facilities. Having a good sense is significant when purchasing a sacrificial animal and checking its nails, noses, skin and weight are important, says one salesman.

DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINIŞIK

The commotion has reached a fevered pitch at an animal bazaar in Istanbul’s Küçükçekmece Municipality, where buyers and sellers are converging to haggle over sacrificial beasts ahead of the Kurban Bayram holiday on Tuesday.

The flurry of bargaining and the flood of people is matched by the ruckus in dozens of 100-square-meter pens where rams and bulls try to escape through wooden fences and salesmen have to beat them back with a stick from time to time to keep them contained.

The temporary animal market set up by the municipality in the Sefaköy neighborhood consists of 40 tents accommodating the pens and the thousands of rams and bulls being bought and sold for the upcoming Feast of the Sacrifice. The market also has four mobile container structures dedicated to sacrificing the animals.

Bayram Bozbay, an Istanbul resident, said he had come to the market to purchase a bull to share with six people and smiled as he shook hands with the salesman. During the bargain, Bozbay told the man to “make it straight,” hoping he would round down to the next whole hundred, but the salesman would not budge. Bozbay paid 7,350 Turkish Liras for a 350-kilogram bull.

“We will sacrifice this bull on the morning of the feast and distribute some to the poor,” said Bozbay on Thursday. “Then we plan to invite relatives for a big meal and visit our neighbors to celebrate their bayram’s afterward.”

The Religious Affairs Directorate has this year made a large effort to clean up bayram activities and prohibited animal sacrifices on the streets following bloody scenes and numerous injuries in previous years. The directorate has declared that only professional butchers and people who have completed municipal certification courses are allowed to perform sacrifices.

As part of its efforts, the directorate has hired 24 professional butchers to work at the market and brought in four fully equipped mobile slaughtering houses, two of which are reserved for charity foundations.

“We charge 200 liras to sacrifice a bull,” said Salih Erdem, the head butcher. Nearby, salesmen offer a wide variety of knives, hooks and choppers for sale on portable stands or out of the trunks of their cars.

Market trouble

To increase the cleanliness of the Kurban activities, animals from eastern Turkey have been banned from the European side of Istanbul because of the risk for foot-and-mouth disease, a highly contagious viral disease carried by cloven-hoofed animals.

“The rams and bulls brought from Thrace to prevent foot-and-mouth disease were not enough. I couldn’t bring any animals from the East,” said Şerif Gürsoy, a 35-year-old stockbreeder, complaining about not selling enough animals this year.

“I brought 70 rams and 17 bulls that I raised from Edirne. In five days, I have sold 55 of them,” Gürsoy said, adding that many customers would not bargain this year due to the low number of animals on the market.

He said he charges 13 liras per kilogram for rams and 12 liras per kilogram for bulls, but that he would barely profit in the end because of the high rent for the tents. He said he couldn’t afford to rent his tent for more than 10 days.

Having a good sense about a ram or a bull is a significant element when purchasing a sacrificial animal, Murat Çoşkun, 50, said, and checking the sheep’s nails, noses, skin and weight are important. “The sheep should be energetic and restless. Look at the imported animals; they are immobile. I believe they were injected with hormones,” he said.

Ahmet Uysal, 40, a salesman who brought sheep from Bulgaria, however, said people started rumors about the imported animals to increase the prices for locally raised sacrificial animals.

“I think there are enough animals in Turkey, yet people are trying to charge more money by saying the stock is low,” said Uysal, adding that he has sold 1,000 sheep so far. “I charge 10 liras per kilogram for sheep,” he said, demonstrating that his prices are cheaper.

Meanwhile, 25-year-old Orkun Özbey and 25-year-old Erkan Kaya said all the prices at the animal bazaar were too high. They said they would drive to Lüleburgaz, in Thrace’s Kırklareli province, to get a reasonable deal at the provincial branch of the state-owned Meat & Fish Enterprise, or EBK.

“Here, one seller tried to sell us a bull for 5,800 liras. We certainly won’t spend that much by driving to Lüleburgaz. Driving and shipping altogether will cost about 200 liras,” said Özbey.

Besides prices, some people complained about the facilities and services the municipality offered at the market. Çoşkun said he spends every night in the tent with the animals, hay and feed.

“I paid 4,000 liras to rent this tent, but the municipality hasn’t provided any water, light or toilet services,” Çoşkun said. “I have performed this job for 40 years, and I haven’t benefited from any kind of services this year. We will take this to court after the holiday. Last year, we were renting a stand for 2,000 liras, and now it has doubled.”

November 15, 2010