An Islamic preacher in Turkey has said that men without beards “cannot be distinguished from women” and may cause “indecent thoughts.”
Speaking on a religious TV channel over the weekend, Murat Bayaral said that men should not be clean-shaven because “one of the two body parts that separate men from women is the beard.”
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According to Hurriyet Daily News, Bayaral added:
“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.”
“Turkish debates on piety and modesty reoccur frequently,” Magdalena Kirchner, a fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center in Turkey, told Newsweek. “Erdogan declared in 2012 his intent to raise ‘devout generations,’ and former Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinç stated in 2014 that women should not laugh out loud in public.”
Bayaral is a marginal figure in Turkey and does not wield much influence. But Kirchner said that statements like Bayaral’s demonstrated efforts by the government and their societal base to create a “bottom-up pressure against [a secular] way of life without having to impose legal constraints.”
Earlier this year, Metropolitan Kornily, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church, urged Russian men to stop shaving to “protect themselves from homosexuality.”
