An Islamic cleric has condemned men who don’t wear beards, insisting that they look like women and can cause indecent thought in other men.
Murat Bayaral, a popular preacher in Turkey has said that men should grow beards to make clear they are not women.
According to Hurriyet Daily News, the Islamic speaker spoke on Fatih Medreseleri this weekend, slamming
men without beards.He said: ‘Men should grow beards. One of the two body parts that separate men from women is the beard,’ Bayaral said, according to Hurriyet Daily News.
‘You could be possessed by indecent thoughts’: Murat Bayaral made the inflammatory comments on television on Saturday
‘For example, if you see a man with long hair from afar you may think he is a woman if he does not have a beard. Because nowadays women and men dress similarly.
‘God forbid! You could be possessed by indecent thoughts.’
The criticism of beardless men has brought backlash.
Magdalena Kirchner, who is a fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center, said that outbursts like Bayaral’s are not uncommon. ‘Turkish debates on piety and modesty reoccur frequently,’ she told Newsweek.
Kirchner went on to add that Bayaral’s beliefs revealed the Turkish Government’s desire to manufacture a ‘bottom-up pressure against [a secular] way of life without having to impose legal constraints.’
Nassim Abdi, from Sydney, made headlines in October when he slammed parents for letting their children listen to music in the car, and dance when at home.
He said: ‘The parents encourage them to listen to music and to dance and to make videos and to make a joke out of it and to make fun out of it and to post it online.
‘What is going to be bred into the heart of this child: the love of the Koran or the love of music?’
Another preacher from Sydney, Umm Jamaal ud-Din, criticised women who choose to pluck their eyebrows.
She said it was sinful, or haram, for women to pluck their eyebrows, even if they believed it was hygienic.
‘What do the girls say? ‘I’m just cleaning, I’m not plucking I’m cleaning.’
‘That sounds great, doesn’t it?
‘Clean shaven. Sounds great but it’s haram. Names of things don’t change the reality.’
