Groups raise issue of Islamification in the north

Islamic organisations are attempting to proselytise in north seeking the Islamification of the Turkish Cypriot community, reports said on Wednesday, pointing to some organisations that have been approaching minors to indoctrinate them.

According to Ozgur Gazete in the north, the organisation Association of Love and Brotherhood (Sevkad) has been conducting various activities to promote Islam in the Turkish Cypriot community, including approaching minors, holding ‘teaching’ meetings at various flats and offices, promising housing to students, and even standing outside well-known mosques with the word ‘jihad’ on banners.

The website showed photos of the group standing outside mosques in Nicosia and Famagusta holding banners saying ‘Life, Faith, Jihad’, according to the PIO.

All these activities are going on with the blessing of the ‘ministry of education’, the website reported.

Later in the day, the TDP&TKP party said that changes in the secularity of the Turkish Cypriot community have been going on for years.

The announcement said: “On the one hand you have the theological school, Koran lessons in mosques and religious worship tourism, and now children, who are too young to distinguish between the virtual and the real, are provided with so-called religious education and are forced to call on jihad in the streets.”

The party said that all these activities are being carried out under the guise of education, and the situation is uncontrolled, as educators are not called in to examine these materials.

“All these demonstrations and activities masquerading as education should be punished as child abuse,” the party said.

Lawyer and head of the group Road to Independence Cansu Nazli said on social media that these activities need to concern everyone.