Taha Kılınç All daily Yeni Şafak Columns

Taha Kılınç

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Christian Zionists Have Stirred Up Trouble in Israel!

23 July 2025, Wednesday

U.S. President Donald Trump had appointed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee—a figure known for his Christian Zionist identity—as ambassador to Israel. Huckabee, who began his career as an evangelical pastor, has long been one of the staunchest American supporters of Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the Likud Party. He even ran for the Republican presidential nomination a couple of times. Last week, the Israeli military bombed a Catholic church in Gaza, killing three people and injuring

Faultlines in Syria...

23 July 2025, Wednesday

Last week’s clashes in Suwayda, the Druze-majority region south of Damascus, served as yet another reminder that the fault lines running through the Middle East remain dangerously active. For those familiar with Syria’s turbulent history, the violence quickly recalled the harrowing days of July 1860. That summer, sectarian conflict between Druze and Christians erupted in the Lebanese Mountains and the Bekaa Valley, claiming the lives of at least 10,000 people—most of them Christians. What appeared

A Lost Treasure...

29 June 2025, Sunday

One of the most tragic events to occur in Türkiye after the proclamation of the Republic happened in 1931, when around 30 to 50 tons of valuable documents written in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian were sold to Bulgaria to be used as “paper pulp.” The details of this incident are filled with absurdities and almost unbelievable negligence: The archive, containing military, financial, political, legal, and literary documents from various far-flung regions once under the Ottoman Empire’s rule,

The other Cyprus...

31 May 2025, Saturday

I will never forget that evening: During our trip in the fall of 2008, wandering every corner of Cyprus with my dear brother Burak Bahadır Bilgin, we found ourselves in Lefke. At that time, finding an open—and suitably clean—mosque for prayer in Cyprus was no small matter. As we searched for a place to perform the evening prayer, we spotted a minaret in the distance and immediately turned the steering wheel in that direction. When we reached the mosque, a man in the son cemaat area was about to

Kashmir: Asia's Palestine

03 May 2025, Saturday

On March 16, 1846, the British government sold Kashmir—a region with a Muslim-majority population—to the Hindu Maharaja Gulab Singh (1792–1857) through the Treaty of Amritsar. In doing so, Britain transferred control of a land it did not rightfully own to a minority group that held no demographic or political weight there, disregarding the will of Kashmir’s native inhabitants. This same approach would later be repeated in Palestine with the infamous Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. In this

Jordan and the Muslim Brotherhood...

30 April 2025, Wednesday

One of the most significant developments in the Middle East last week was the decision by the Kingdom of Jordan to officially declare the Muslim Brotherhood organization (commonly known as the Ikhwan) illegal and seize all of its assets. This move is particularly striking given that the Brotherhood had, until recently, been able to operate with relative freedom in Jordan. To understand the full context, it's worth revisiting some history. Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna and his associates in the

The legacy of Khurshid Ahmad…

16 April 2025, Wednesday

Renowned Islamic economist, politician, and thinker Prof. Dr. Khurshid Ahmad (93) passed away in Leicester, United Kingdom. Several of his works were translated into Turkish, and his life story reads like a panorama of the dramatic transformations the Indian Subcontinent experienced over the last century. Born in 1932 in Delhi, Khurshid Ahmad came from a distinguished family tracing its lineage to Abu Bakr, the first caliph of Islam. His father, Nazir Ahmad, was a businessman deeply involved in

The Mufti of Barrel Bombs...

29 March 2025, Saturday

Sheikh Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun, the former Grand Mufti of Syria under Bashar al-Assad’s regime, was arrested at Damascus International Airport on Tuesday, March 25, while attempting to leave for Jordan with his family. Hassoun, who held the position of Grand Mufti from 2005 to 2021, had largely disappeared from public view after the fall of the Ba’ath regime in late 2024. After spending some time in hiding in Damascus, he relocated to his hometown of Aleppo, only to resurface in controversy when

The View from Damascus…

11 March 2025, Tuesday

Last Thursday evening (March 6), I went to Halbouni Mosque, near the historic center of Damascus, for Tarawih prayers. The streets were pitch dark, as the city experiences frequent power cuts at night. When I arrived, I found the mosque packed to capacity, with a congregation mostly made up of young people. There was not even a small space left to pray. Feeling both heartened by the large turnout and disappointed that I couldn’t find a spot, I walked to the Mevlevi Mosque across from the Hejaz Railway

On the Pulpit of the Umayyad Mosque...

23 February 2025, Sunday

Last Friday (February 14, 2025), the Umayyad Mosque, one of Damascus’ most iconic landmarks, witnessed yet another historic moment. One of Syria’s most esteemed scholars, Sheikh Muhammad Mujir al-Khatib al-Hasani, delivered a sermon in his homeland for the first time in years, addressing the people from the pulpit. The reason I describe Sheikh Mujir’s Friday sermon as “historic” is deeply tied to the legacy of the Khatib family, whose name has become almost synonymous with the pulpit of the Umayyad