Born in Ankara in 1956, Adnan Oktar writes his books under the pen name of Harun Yahya. Ever since his uni­ver­sity years, he has ded­i­cated his life to telling of the exis­tence and one­ness of Almighty Allah, and to dis­sem­i­nat­ing the moral val­ues of the Qur’an. He has never wavered in the face of dif­fi­cul­ties and despite oppres­sion, still con­tin­ues this intel­lec­tual strug­gle today exhibit­ing great patience and determination.

When Adnan Oktar entered Mimar Sinan Uni­ver­sity, it was under the influ­ence of var­i­ous ille­gal Marxist-communist orga­ni­za­tions. Aggres­sive athe­ist and mate­ri­al­ist trends pre­dom­i­nated among stu­dents as well as the aca­d­e­mic staff. Indeed, some mem­bers of the teach­ing staff would seize every oppor­tu­nity to pro­pa­gan­dize on behalf of mate­ri­al­ist phi­los­o­phy and Dar­win­ism, even though these sub­jects had noth­ing to do with the curriculum.

This envi­ron­ment accorded reli­gion and moral val­ues no respect, and rejected them almost entirely. The mate­ri­al­ist view pre­dom­i­nated. But Adnan Oktar began telling those around him of the exis­tence and one­ness of Allah, and was the only per­son who prayed openly in the Molla Mosque, adja­cent to the university.

At night-as his mother, Mediha Oktar, relates-Adnan Oktar would sleep only a few hours and spend the rest of his time read­ing, tak­ing notes and writ­ing. He read hun­dreds of works includ­ing those deal­ing with Marx­ism, Lenin­ism, Mao­ism, com­mu­nism and mate­ri­al­ist phi­los­o­phy, and car­ried out detailed stud­ies of the clas­sics as well as more seldom-read texts. He also per­formed wide-ranging research into the the­ory of evolution-the alleged sci­en­tific foun­da­tion of these ide­olo­gies. Oktar col­lected con­sid­er­able quan­ti­ties of doc­u­ments and detailed infor­ma­tion reveal­ing the increas­ing dilem­mas faced by these super­sti­tious philosophies-their quan­daries, con­tra­dic­tions and false­hoods, all based on a denial of Allah-and used his accu­mu­lated knowl­edge to invite peo­ple to real­ity and truth. He spoke to every­one, uni­ver­sity stu­dents and staff alike, about the exis­tence and one­ness of Allah and the moral val­ues of the Qur’an. In con­ver­sa­tions at the uni­ver­sity can­teen, and in breaks between classes, he out­lined the decep­tions of mate­ri­al­ism and Dar­win­ism, cit­ing direct quo­ta­tions from these ide­olo­gies’ orig­i­nal texts.

Adnan Oktar attached spe­cial impor­tance to refut­ing the the­ory of evo­lu­tion. That was because he saw that ever since Darwinism’s first appear­ance, it had been sub­sumed by mate­ri­al­ism and athe­ism. Aware that today, those same cir­cles are still defend­ing Dar­win­ism and striv­ing to keep it alive for ide­o­log­i­cal rea­sons, Adnan Oktar believes that erad­i­cat­ing Dar­win­ism will hand those move­ments a major defeat.

The First Pam­phlet to Deal Dar­win­ism a Body Blow

To that end, Adnan Oktar con­cen­trated on prov­ing the inva­lid­ity of this decep­tion that for more than a cen­tury had turned peo­ple away from reli­gious moral val­ues. He real­ized that since Dar­win­ism advanced itself in the name of sci­ence, the most effec­tive means of reveal­ing its true face was through sci­ence itself. Based on that view­point, he brought out a pam­phlet enti­tled The The­ory of Evo­lu­tion, a sum­mary of his wide-ranging research and study, and per­son­ally bore all the print­ing costs by sell­ing prop­erty inher­ited from his fam­ily, and dis­trib­uted the pam­phlet free of charge to other uni­ver­sity students.

Using an acces­si­ble and com­pre­hen­si­ble style, this pam­phlet demon­strated that evo­lu­tion was a decep­tion, with no sci­en­tific valid­ity. Many peo­ple who read the pam­phlet and spoke with Adnan Oktar came to agree that no liv­ing thing could come into being by chance, and that Almighty Allah cre­ated the uni­verse and all liv­ing things in it.

Nonethe­less some stu­dents in the uni­ver­sity, blindly devoted to mate­ri­al­ist thought, con­tin­ued in denial, despite hav­ing seen the clear truth. Some mil­i­tant stu­dents openly threat­ened Oktar, say­ing his life would be in dan­ger unless he ceased his activ­i­ties. Yet this only increased Oktar’s deter­mi­na­tion and devo­tion to Allah. The harsh reac­tions and alarm evinced by mate­ri­al­ist cir­cles were sig­nif­i­cant proof that he was on the right path.

In a uni­ver­sity in which ter­ror ruled, dom­i­nated by athe­ist and mate­ri­al­ist move­ments, devout indi­vid­u­als were harassed for their beliefs. Dur­ing those years, while many young peo­ple in Turkey were ruth­lessly slaugh­tered because of ide­o­log­i­cal ten­sions, Adnan Oktar openly preached the exis­tence and one­ness of Allah and of the truth of the Qur’an. In a uni­ver­sity where no one had the courage to state his beliefs openly, he con­tin­ued to pray reg­u­larly at the mosque, unwa­ver­ing in the face of reac­tions and threats.

Spread­ing Reli­gious Moral Val­ues at Mimar Sinan University

When Adnan Oktar began com­mu­ni­cat­ing Islamic val­ues, he was quite alone. For more than three years nobody at Mimar Sinan Uni­ver­sity backed up his views, yet that did not alter his deter­mi­na­tion. Know­ing that Allah was his only friend, he did all these things solely to gain His approval.

He devoted all his time, energy and means to a sin­gle pur­pose: earn­ing the good plea­sure, mercy and Par­adise of Allah, and telling all mankind about reli­gious moral values.

In 1982, the first few stu­dents at Mimar Sinan Uni­ver­sity decided to sup­port Adnan Oktar in his intel­lec­tual strug­gle. As months passed, the num­bers of peo­ple adopt­ing these ideas rose. Adnan Oktar held con­ver­sa­tions with these young peo­ple on love of coun­try; the impor­tance of fol­low­ing in the great leader Ataturk’s path; the proofs of cre­ation; the exem­plary moral val­ues of our Prophet (saas); the pro­vi­sions and moral val­ues revealed in the Qur’an by our Lord; and the inva­lid­ity of the then-prevailing ide­olo­gies of mate­ri­al­ism, athe­ism and Dar­win­ism. From this time onward, Adnan Oktar was a vehi­cle by which many peo­ple came to believe.

The First Smear Cam­paign and Tor­ture in a Men­tal Hospital

His intel­lec­tual activ­i­ties oppos­ing mate­ri­al­ism and athe­ism began to elicit reac­tions from wider cir­cles. Cer­tain groups, alarmed by Adnan Oktar’s nation­al­ist and reli­gious activ­i­ties, set up a major con­spir­acy against him. Their plot coin­cided with the pub­li­ca­tion of his work Judaism and Freema­sonry, which pro­voked an enor­mous response.

In the sum­mer of 1986, Adnan Oktar was arrested for hav­ing stated, ” I am a mem­ber of the Turk­ish nation, and of the com­mu­nity of Ibrahim,” in an inter­view car­ried by a news­pa­per. Again under the influ­ence of the cir­cles men­tioned above, mis­lead­ing reports, false infor­ma­tion and slan­ders about him began appear­ing in var­i­ous publications.

Adnan Oktar was first arrested and impris­oned, then trans­ferred to the Bakirkoy Men­tal Hos­pi­tal on the grounds of being men­tally unhealthy and placed under obser­va­tion in ward 14A, poorly main­tained, filthy, and used to house the most dan­ger­ous inmates. Ward 14A could be entered only by pass­ing through a num­ber of locked iron doors, since killings among patients were viewed as noth­ing out of the ordi­nary. Adnan Oktar was chained to his bed by his ankles for six weeks and forcibly given drugs blur­ring con­scious­ness. Young col­leagues who man­aged to visit him wit­nessed that he had lost none of his deter­mi­na­tion and enthu­si­asm. Post­grad­u­ate stu­dents, nurses and even doc­tors were pro­hib­ited from see­ing him, out of con­cerns that he would turn them to Islamic moral val­ues. Shortly after­wards, his fam­ily and rel­a­tives were also banned from vis­it­ing him, and even tele­phone calls were for­bid­den. He was threat­ened with spend­ing the rest of his life in the hos­pi­tal unless he aban­doned his activ­i­ties. Cer­tain cir­cles strongly sug­gested that if he ceased pub­li­ca­tion of Judaism and Freema­sonry, he could imme­di­ately be released from hos­pi­tal and spend the rest of his life in com­fort. Finan­cial incen­tives were also offered if he would hand over all the book’s research mate­ri­als. But he rejected all these offers, refus­ing to bow to the threats and pres­sure that only enhanced his determination.

After Oktar had been detained for 19 months, the Prosecutor’s Office deter­mined there was “no offence in the state­ments uttered.” He was declared inno­cent and released.

Dur­ing this period, Oktar con­tin­ued his work on reveal­ing that Dar­win­ism is a ter­ri­ble decep­tion. In 1986 he col­lected all his research on Darwinism’s true face in the book Liv­ing Things and Evo­lu­tion, which for many years, remained the sole ref­er­ence show­ing the sci­en­tific inva­lid­ity of the the­ory of evolution .

The Cocaine Conspiracy

Again in mid-1991, cer­tain cir­cles made uneasy by his cul­tural activ­i­ties made him the tar­get of a con­spir­acy. At the time, he was prepar­ing a most impor­tant man­u­script on the his­tory of Freema­sonry and world-wide Masonic orga­ni­za­tions. Police, search­ing the home he shared with his mother in Istanbul’s Ortakoy dis­trict, dis­cov­ered a packet of cocaine in the very first book they opened-in a library of some 2,000 books!

Adnan Oktar was imme­di­ately detained in Izmir where he was together with a few friends, then trans­ferred to the Istan­bul Secu­rity Direc­torate, and after 62 hours, was sent to the Foren­sic Med­i­cine Insti­tu­tion for drug test­ing. It was announced that Adnan Oktar’s blood showed a high level of a cocaine by-product.

How­ever, all the evi­dence sub­mit­ted later showed that this was noth­ing more than slan­der; and that the cocaine allegedly found in Adnan Oktar’s library was part of this con­spir­acy. Shortly before the arrest, he had felt that secret moves against him were afoot. Leav­ing his home in Ortakoy he called his mother Mediha Oktar to warn her of a likely plot against him and asked her to clean and search his house with a few other peo­ple as wit­nesses. His mother called her neigh­bor and jan­i­tor, and together they cleaned her son’s home from top to bot­tom, dust­ing all the books in his library. Although Adnan Oktar did not return after that clean­ing, 16 police offi­cers car­ry­ing out the search oper­a­tion “found” a packet of cocaine among his books as soon as they entered the house. The neigh­bor and jan­i­tor later made a sworn state­ment, say­ing jointly that “We cleaned Adnan Oktar’s library together, and there was no such packet there.”

The sec­ond phase of the conspiracy-the cocaine by-product in Adnan Oktar’s blood-was refuted by sci­en­tific and foren­sic evi­dence. Adnan Oktar was kept in the Secu­rity Head­quar­ters for 62 hours before the analy­ses was per­formed. Sci­en­tif­i­cally, how­ever, it can be cal­cu­lated how much cocaine a man has taken and how many hours before by mea­sur­ing the cocaine by-product in his blood. In Adnan Oktar’s blood, that level was so high that had he taken that much cocaine 62 hours before, it would have killed him. This showed that the cocaine had entered his body much sooner, by being mixed with his food while he was in detention.

This was con­firmed by some 30 inter­na­tional foren­sic med­i­cine insti­tu­tions, includ­ing Scot­land Yard. To the file sent to them for exam­i­na­tion, all gave a com­mon response: The cocaine had been admin­is­tered while Adnan Oktar was in deten­tion by being mixed with his food.

Sub­se­quently, the Turk­ish Foren­sic Med­i­cine Insti­tu­tion con­firmed that the inci­dent was a con­spir­acy, that the cocaine had been admin­is­tered dur­ing the deten­tion period, and Adnan Oktar was cleared by the court and released.

How­ever, this inci­dent revealed that forces hos­tile to Adnan Oktar intended to employ all kinds of dirty tricks. These forces, who pre­vi­ously sought to intim­i­date Adnan Oktar with prison and oppres­sion, were now con­spir­ing against him.

You can see the orig­i­nals of some of the reports issued by health insti­tu­tions prov­ing that the cocaine entered Adnan Oktar’s body less than 62 hours before, in other words, while he was under detention.

1– Insti­tute of Foren­sic Med­i­cine of Munich University

2– Insti­tute of Foren­sic Med­i­cine of Aachen University

3– Turk­ish Min­istry of Jus­tice, Foren­sic Med­i­cine Insti­tu­tion, 5th Spe­cial­ist Board

4– Turk­ish Min­istry of Jus­tice, Foren­sic Med­i­cine Institution

5– Grid Chart by Prof. John Ambre Used As One of the Main Ref­er­ence Tools in Foren­sic Med­i­cine Reports

6– Basel Police and Mil­i­tary Depart­ment, Foren­sic Med­i­cine Laboratory

7– Insti­tute of Foren­sic Med­i­cine of Bonn Rheinis­chen Friedrich-Wilhelms University

8– French Inte­rior Min­istry Police Laboratory

9– Depart­ment of Foren­sic Med­i­cine and Sci­ence, Uni­ver­sity of Glasgow

10– Insti­tute of Foren­sic Med­i­cine, Cer­rah­pasa Med­ical Fac­ulty, Istan­bul University

11– St. Gallen Can­tonal Hos­pi­tal, Insti­tute for Foren­sic Medicine

12– Prof. Davide Fer­rara of Padua University

13– Prof. Dr. H. W. Raudo­nat Cen­ter for Foren­sic Medicine

14– Insti­tute of Foren­sic Med­i­cine of Tbin­gen University

15– Uni­ver­sity of Parma, Fac­ulty of Med­i­cine and Surgery

16– Insti­tute of Foren­sic Med­i­cine of Vienna University

Adnan Oktar’s Work on His Books

After 1991 Adnan Oktar ded­i­cated all his time to writ­ing and spent all his time at home.

Under the pen name of Harun Yahya, he has writ­ten hun­dreds of valu­able books. Those that pre­sented sci­en­tific refu­ta­tions of Dar­win­ism pro­voked par­tic­u­larly strong reac­tions in the sci­en­tific world. The 22 April 2000 issue of New Sci­en­tist called Mr. Oktar an “inter­na­tional hero” for com­mu­ni­cat­ing the fact of cre­ation over the fal­lacy of evo­lu­tion. The author’s intel­lec­tual strug­gle against mate­ri­al­ism and Dar­win­ism has often been men­tioned in such mainly evo­lu­tion­ist pub­li­ca­tions as National Geo­graphic, Sci­ence, New Sci­en­tist and NSCE Reports. The Eng­lish and Ger­man edi­tions of National Geographic’s Novem­ber, 2004 issue referred to his works con­cern­ing the fact of cre­ation, and included the fol­low­ing quo­ta­tion from The Evo­lu­tion Deceit: “The the­ory of evo­lu­tion is noth­ing but a decep­tion imposed on us by the dom­i­na­tors of the world system.”

Adnan Oktar’s works have been trans­lated into many lan­guages, includ­ing Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Ital­ian, Span­ish, Por­tuguese, Urdu, Chi­nese, Ara­bic, Alban­ian, Russ­ian, Serbo-Croat, Uigur, Indone­sian, Azeri, Ben­gali, Bul­gar­ian, Dan­ish, Pol­ish and Malay, and enjoy a world-wide read­er­ship in a great many coun­tries, from India to Amer­ica, Great Britain to Indone­sia, from Poland to Bosnia, Spain and Brazil.

Through these books, a great many peo­ple have come to appre­ci­ate and to grow more deeply in their faith. Every­one who reads and stud­ies his work is affected by this pro­found dif­fer­ence and ben­e­fits from his sin­cere, wise and eas­ily acces­si­ble style. Each book is char­ac­ter­ized by proven, defin­i­tive facts pre­sented with hon­est clar­ity, which nobody can refute-features that doubtlessly stem from a strik­ing wis­dom vouch­safed by Allah.

Adnan Oktar Again Encoun­ters Oppression

Var­i­ous cir­cles grew alarmed at all of his self­less activ­ity. Unable to rebut Adnan Oktar’s works on an intel­lec­tual level, mate­ri­al­ist and Masonic cir­cles incited a slan­der cam­paign to pre­vent any sci­en­tific work that might under­mine the the­ory of evo­lu­tion, aim­ing to neu­tral­ize it through slan­der and imputation.

In Novem­ber 1999, exactly when reports were cir­cu­lat­ing that his three-volume work Global Freema­sonry, was about to be pub­lished, Adnan Oktar came under renewed pres­sure. The forces that had sought to hin­der the spread of reli­gious moral val­ues with smears, plots, false reports and accu­sa­tions ever since Adnan Oktar first embarked on his intel­lec­tual strug­gle, had again entered the picture.

As a result of their incite­ment and mis­in­for­ma­tion, on 12 Novem­ber, 1999, police raided the homes and work­places of mem­bers of the Sci­ence Research Foun­da­tion. They found no evi­dence of crim­i­nal activ­ity, and observed no immoral activ­ity. Nonethe­less, day after day, the press ran unbe­liev­able false­hoods and mutu­ally con­tra­dic­tory slan­ders. As a result, Adnan Oktar was remanded to prison for nine months, in the absence of any legal evidence.

Dur­ing all these tri­als, he has always con­sti­tuted a role model main­tain­ing his trust in, and sub­mis­sion to, Allah, recall­ing that through­out his­tory, believ­ers have all been tested with sim­i­lar inci­dents, that every event takes place in a des­tiny deter­mined by Allah, in a wise and aus­pi­cious man­ner. No mat­ter what may befall them, he has always said that believ­ers must always be mod­er­ate, joy­fully deter­mined, and sub­mit to Allah’s will.

He has always been for­giv­ing and com­pas­sion­ate towards those who have con­spired to blacken his name with irra­tional and illog­i­cal slan­ders. Act­ing in the light of the moral­ity revealed by Allah in the verse “Repel the bad with some­thing bet­ter” (Surah Fussi­lat, 34), he was totally cleared by the court of all accu­sa­tions made against him on 12 Novem­ber, 1999. He is still actively engaged in his lit­er­ary activ­i­ties today, call­ing on his read­ers to live by proper moral values.

{ 0 comments }