Turkey’s top cleric urges Pope to act over mosque attacks

Drawing attention to steadily rising attacks against mosques in Germany, Turkey’s top cleric has said the Pope must “translate words into deeds with regard to the misperception and misinterpretation of Islam.”

In Germany, from 2001 to 2013, an average of 22 mosques were attacked each year, Mehmet Görmez, the head of Turkey’s Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet), said on Sept. 2, adding that the figure had risen to 36 in 2013 and to 70 in 2014.

All religious institutions, the Vatican being in the first place, should focus on these rising attacks against mosques in Germany, Görmez said, while speaking at a meeting at the Diyanet’s Ankara headquarters. The meeting was also attended by a senior member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Ankara deputy Emrullah İşler, who served as deputy prime minister until the new government took office a few days ago.

“This doesn’t happen through things like washing a young girl’s feet or arranging inter-religious football games and tournaments,” he added, in an apparent reference to symbolic moves made by Pope Francis. In March 2013, the Pope made international headlines by washing the feet of two women and two Muslims at a juvenile detention center in Rome. Before this, modern Popes had only ever washed the feet of 12 priests at the Vatican, during the Mass for the Last Supper.

“There is need to quell movements of ‘otherization’ and ‘enemization’ aimed at members of a high religion like Islam, by acting upon the wisdom that these divine religions brought to the earth. A very big task now rest on the shoulders of the Presidency of the Directorate for Religious Affairs regarding this issue,” Görmez also said.

İşler was at the...