Prayer rooms in Turkish opera houses?

Ahmet Altan, the “chief columnist” and editor-in-chief of Taraf, a radically liberal Turkish daily which minces words for no one, recently wrote a piece titled “Prayer Room for Opera.”

His tone was not supportive but rather very critical of these “mescids” — the Islamic term for prayer rooms — that a new law by the Turkish government requires in all shopping malls, movie theaters, and other public spaces such as theaters and operas.

“Have you ever heard any conservative or religious person in this country complaining: ‘I can’t live my religion if there are no mescids in opera or ballet houses?’” Altan asked. “And has there been any discussion in the history of the Islam on whether there should be prayer rooms in operas?”

According to Altan, this new law was not only absurd, but also ill-intended. It only exposed Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s triumphalism and his effort to “hide the real issues” from the public agenda.

From: here

On the surface, having a prayer room isn´t a bad thing.  Requiring by law is a bad idea.  What is the next step?  Requiring people to pray?  

We have a lot of the same issues going on here where conservatives are screaming about keeping a "Christian America" and Liberals are demonizing all things religious.  It is all a distraction to keep us fighting over rights that are already constitutionally guaranteed...in other words, there is no need to fight about them.  The politicians in the world can´t seem to fix what is wrong so they are distracting us with nonsense!  

It seems a bit strange... requiring a prayer room by law, when nobody asked for it. And would these prayer rooms be suitable for all religions? With all materials that are required for praying for non-muslims as well? I think not... if this law pulls through it is a very bad step for Turkey.

I think it is not a big deal as long as they don´t force people to pray. And I am sure nobody will use mescid in such a place because it is absurd.

The fact that they are forcing cultural centres such as an opera to make place for a room like that is already too far in my opinion. Should they just cram all the actors into smaller dressing rooms to make room for prayer? It sends the wrong message, namely that the government forces people to adapt towards Islam.

All the qurans are same throughout history, there was no different quran in the past. quran and hadith are two different thing. There is no hadith in quran. According to islamic knowledge, quran is god´s speech but the hadith is the prophet´s speech. quran was collected after muhammad´s death (pbuh). all parts of quran was written in different papers as soon as they were revealed by muhammad´s writers (vahiy katipleri). Also thousands of people memorised it from the first moment before all parts were collected and copied. No one who memorised the quran objected after it is collected, no one said this quran different than what i memorised. There is no change doubt in quran. it is what it is from the first moment. You have free will to say it is not true but you cannot say it was changed.

Yes. An in a supposedly (or so-called) secular state.

That is your opinion. Only by religion you can belief that to be a fact. You were not there since the writing of the quran, and I have seen the evidence for some older qurans. So I believe otherwise. Each their own, so I can say what my opinion is.

By the way, thousands of people memorising something is not proof for anything. Have you never played the "telephone game"?

Barba I am just curious, what evidence of some "older Qurans"  you have seen ? Could you please share them with us ? 

Of course nobody that is living at present time was there to witness it. Therefore we call it "Faith" [İman] In one describtion "Faith" means "believing in something exists or happened without seeing and witnessing it in person"

Say you Barba yourself sending posts on this site. How could we be sure that is you typing those posts as we are not with you to witness while you typing ? Could be someone else writing on behalf of you. But we have a faith in you that is you sending those posts. [ at least I have a faith in you]

barba_mama, I have a slight problem with this attitude of yours that you know and our muslim members just believe because they have been programmed to do so. I am looking forward to seeing your evidence also.

I am not an expert of Qur´an or classical Arabic or an expert of anything to that point but I have read about this issue. Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, the professor of Arabic and Islam in Helsinki University has in his writings come to the conclusion that there is no proof of the Qur´an having gone through changes during its history even though western researchers have put serious effort into proving the opposite. Hämeen-Anttila is still in the middle of his career and you can easily find more information about him and his views.

Hämeen-Anttila is not a muslim if it helps.

What comes to the classification of hadiths on terms of how authentic they are I have understood that it has been fixed in the golden age of islamic civilization and done with special care and scholarship. Shoot me down if I am wrong.