That title worried me for a minute


I read Turkey Sex Cult Chief Sentenced to More Than 1,000 Years in Jail and thought at first it was going to be about some ghastly poultry fetishist, but no, it’s something completely different.

A Turkish Islamic televangelist was sentenced to 1,075 years in jail on Monday for running a decades-old cult whose members were accused of crimes ranging from sexual assault to blackmail, money laundering and even espionage.

Adnan Oktar, who wrote books on Islamic creationism under the pseudonym Harun Yahya, was put on trial in Istanbul alongside 236 other alleged members or enablers of his network, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

He became well-known in Turkey over the years, especially for provocative TV shows broadcast on his own channel. On screen, the cult leader surrounded himself with young women he called his “kittens,” who were often dressed in revealing clothing while he uttered opinions on religious and political matters.

Goodbye, Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar! I still have a couple of copies of his Atlas of Creation, a truly silly book.

Comments

  1. johnhattan says

    Was that the one that showed a photo of an “insect” that was clearly a fishing lure?

  2. mathman85 says

    Ah, Harun Yahya. Haven’t heard from him in a while.

    And now I won’t again, probably as long as I live. No great loss.

  3. Vreejack says

    It was a beautiful, if poorly researched book. Anyway, I expected many stupid things from Hahrun Yahya, but not him getting sentenced to over one thousand years in a Turkish prison.

  4. azpaul3 says

    1000 years. That’s what you get for pissing off an Islamo-fascist state. The same kind of state christians want to build here. With a different set of gods, of course.

    I don’t care if an idiot gets brought down, but the way, why and how hard, in addition to the sentence, is tragic.

    We have our own religious illiteratii here. Same stuff.

    Do you advocate we throw them all in jail for a thousand yea … wait …

    Nevermind.

  5. says

    @7 azpaul3
    No, here in America they want to kill people like that outright. 1000 years is more lenient than what the x-tian reich wants as punishment.

  6. says

    Most Muslims I know are happy he has finally got what he deserved. His creationist crap was only half of the bastardy he got up to. Name ia conspiracy theory prevalent in the Muslim world and chances are he played both sides of it.

  7. says

    Ray Ceeya, if only they did. The Christian Reich is where he got his inspiration and material from. His connections with them goes back to the time when Duane Fish was galloping his lies to unsuspecting audiences.

  8. davidc1 says

    Without looking it up, isn’t it around a hundred years since that bloke got rid of the sultan and set up a secular republic in
    Turkey ? Didn’t last long did it?

  9. cartomancer says

    It’s probably a cultural thing, but I have no idea why anyone would think that surrounding themself with young women in revealing clothing for public appearances is a good thing to do. What message is it trying to convey? It certainly doesn’t suggest competence or intelligence or wisdom. Indeed, all it does is scream “creepy” or “tacky” or “inappropriate” at top volume. I can just about see it for someone like Hugh Hefner, whose business was porn, but for a religious preacher?

    Is this a Turkish / Middle Eastern thing? Or is it seen as just as weird there?

  10. says

    Creepy sexuality seems to be common with these types. The American evangelist Bill Gothard is big on women having long, curly hair, which has caused much angst for those of his followers who have trouble achieving that look. He was accused of multiple counts of sexual harassment in 2014.

  11. birgerjohansson says

    The Joker, and most other villains are monogamous. (Exception:Two-face)
    When I become evil overlord, I will at least insist on any kittens being clever, and being trained assassins. You know, like in 90% ofJapanese anime.
    That Oktar feller is just another wannabe Mormon prophet. We real supervillains despise the lot.