DECEMBER 13, 2014 - Wall painted with Islamic State flagThis imam was appointed to his post by Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate. Presumably he had years of training: study of the Qur’an, study of Muhammad, study of Islamic law. And yet now he has gone to join the Islamic State. Has John Kerry been notified of this? Somehow this imam missed all the many ways — ways that are obvious to all non-Muslim politicians in the West — in which the Islamic State is transgressing against Islamic teaching. He needs some real instruction! Can Joe Biden be dispatched to Çanakkale’s Bayramiç district, and cross into the Islamic State from there, so as to find this imam and talk some sense into him?“Turkish imam joins ISIL in Syria, deputy PM confirms,” Hürriyet Daily News, December 12, 2014 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
An imam who worked at a mosque in the Çanakkale province of northwestern Turkey has joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), daily Taraf cited Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç as saying on Dec. 12, adding that the imam has been removed from his post.
“Unfortunately it is true that an imam from Çanakkale’s Bayramiç district joined the ISIL. This person was suspended from his post on June 25,” said Arınç, while responding to questions over the budget of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet). In Turkey, imams are appointed to mosques by the Diyanet.
“I don’t know if there are similar examples in other provinces, but it deeply hurt us that an imam could leave the country to join an army of such murderers,” the deputy prime minister also said.
More than 100 of the 600 Turkish citizens that have gone to fight for jihadist groups such as ISIL have perished in battle, according to intelligence estimates, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Nov. 24.
Some 7,000 foreigners have been banned from entering Turkey and 1,100 people were deported on suspicions that they may join jihadist groups, the minister said in reply to questions by lawmakers in Parliament during budget discussions.
The foreign minister said it was unfair to expect Turkey, which has a 1,000-kilometer-long border with Syria and Iraq, to tackle alone the problem of foreign fighters crossing through Turkish territory. He asked Western countries to share more intelligence with Turkey on suspected militants so that Turkish authorities can stop them from entering the country….
Link to source: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/12/turkish-imam-joins-the-islamic-state
