Replica Mecca, Quran-shaped Cake Slammed By Turkey's Top Religious Body

Turkey's top religious body has registered its disdain at two recent efforts to celebrate Islam, describing a Quran-shaped cake as "wrong" and slamming the replicas of Islam's holiest places and objects as "great sin."

Two municipalities in Istanbul recently constructed replicas of the Kaaba in Mecca, as well as other sacred places.

It was also recently revealed that a Quran-shaped cake was made by a Quran class in the Black Sea province of Tokat in 2013.

"It is very wrong to use a Quran or Kaaba-shaped cake to inaugurate a company or for similar occasions" Turkey's top religious body, the Diyanet, said in a statement on April 21.

"A mockup [of the Kaaba] should only be used to practise how to act [during the Hajj]. Otherwise, it is a great sin to try to tawaf this mockup while thinking of fulfilling a religious duty" the statement said.

Tawaf is one of the Islamic rituals of pilgrimage, or the Hajj. It consists of circumambulating the Kaaba, which is the most sacred site in Islam, seven times, in a counterclockwise direction.

(PHOTO) - Istanbul