Why Turkey’s Islamists turned their back on renowned Syrian preacher
The Turkish officials and Islamists who once welcomed Syrian Islamic scholar Jawdat Said with great adulation were tellingly absent from the renowned scholar’s low-key funeral.
Prominent Islamic scholar Jawdat Said, whose uncompromised rejection of violence and devoted advocacy for nonviolent protests against the Syrian government earned him the title of Syria's “Arab Gandhi,” died at the age of 91 in Istanbul where he had taken refuge to escape the war.
Said was one of the signatories of the so-called Damascus Declaration, a joint statement embraced by large segments of Syrian society including Kurds, members of Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and other Syrian opposition leaders who called for a peaceful transition and reform process in Syria.
The preacher moved to Turkey in 2012 after his brother was killed in armed clashes between Syrian government forces and the radical Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra in the southern Syrian province of Quneitra.
Declining offers of help from Turkish government bodies and officials, he and his wife, who died last year, survived mainly with the support of family and Circassian organizations.
