Turkey’s top religious authority has launched a campaign against the so-called "Jedi religion," the fantastical belief system featured in Star Wars, according to regional reports.
Turkish religious authorities are now expressing fear of the Star Wars universe and claiming that it goes against Islam, Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News reports.
The latest edition of a monthly magazine published by Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, includes a lengthy article rallying against Jedis and warning that the religion is spreading across the globe.
"Jediism … is spreading today in Christian societies," Bilal Yorulmaz, a professor at the Marmara University, warns in the article, according to Hurriyet. "Around 70,000 people in Australia and 390,000 people in England currently define themselves as Jedis," Yorulmaz wrote, before engaging in an Islamic-based critique of a number of Hollywood blockbusters."
The religious scholar "also slammed Turkish theatre and cinema producers over what he described as the ‘ill-minded’ presentation of religious people as ‘bad characters’ and also giving Islamic-themed names to unintelligent characters," according to the report.
The Turkish religious authority’s campaign against the Jedi faith reportedly comes some four months after thousands of Turkish students launched an online campaign to build a Jedi temple on their university campus.
Turkey also has taken a religious stance against The Simpsons cartoon show in recent years.
In 2012, the Turkish government fined a television station nearly $30,000 for broadcasting a Simpsons episode that was deemed "blasphemous."
The episode in question had been "making fun of God, encouraging the young people to exercise violence by showing the murders as God’s orders and encouraging them to start drinking alcohol on New Year’s Eve night," according to Turkish authorities.