What would Muhammad say?

Posted By Andrew Swift Friday, February 5, 2010 - 12:17 PM Share

A "prophet row" has emerged in Turkey after Emine Erdogan, wife of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was denied access to a military hospital because of her headscarf. Heated exchanges in the Grand National Assembly followed, as opposition politician Osman Durmu of the Nationalist Movement Party sarcastically called Prime Minister Erdogan a prophet:

How dare you not allow the wife of a prime minister, who is accepted as a prophet, to [the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine]? Who do you think you are?

Erdogan was not amused:

My wife was not allowed to visit a patient only because of her headscarf. Rather than criticizing this prohibition, they are joking about the incident... It is unbearable to hear such a definition about me. They claim ‘Erdogan would like to be the prophet’… What a silly argument. It is obvious they are sinking to new lows.

The hijab has long been a divisive symbol in Turkey. Erdogan's Justice and Development party (AKP) passed legislation to ease the Turkish ban on headscarves in universities in 2008, but the statute was overruled by the Constitutional Court later that year.

GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images

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