Harun Yahia: secularity establishes Islam’s practices

A controversial Turkish Islamic scholar says 90 percent of people in his country are against Darwinism. He describes himself as “secular” while most of lay people oppose him.

• “All religions deal with secularity because they respect all people including the non-religion practising ones, Christians and Jews,” Adnan Oktar, who writes under the name pen name of Harun Yahya, told Echorouk in an interview.  
• “For me, secularity is something good and it is taken from Islam,” he said.
• He believes secularity can establishes practices in Islam. “If there is no secularity, it means there will be compulsion in religion while the holly Koran says ‘no compulsion in religion’,” he says.
• “If you force people to pray and fast, they will pretend to do that but without having faith. God says (in the Koran) ‘You have your own religion and I have mine.’ That means there is a freedom of ideas. This is the secularity I am talking about.”
• Harun Yahya believes Muslims will be unified under the leadership of Mahdi, the hidden imam when he comes.
• “He will not shed blood but he will unify Muslims by prayer, faith and a call to belief.”
• “Even if Muslims do not make efforts in that regard, the fate of this life is the arrival of Mahdi and the unity of Muslims under his leadership.”
• “According to the people I have met throughout the world, they accept to unify the Muslim world under the leadership of Turkish.”
• Harun Yahia said he met a lot of Israelis who want to break the obstacle with Arabs.
• “Jews and Palestinians are all sons of Prophet Abraham. Judaism is an old Muslim religion but it was altered. The Koran admits that.”
• “If Jews do not believe in Islam’s principles, they may do that in the future.”
• “The point is they must not attack Muslims as they are the People of the Book along with Christians.”
• “The Koran and the Prophet Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) ask us to have a good behaviour with them,” he says.
• Harun Yahia was born in 1956. He studied fine arts in 1979-1983. He taught philosophy at the University of Istanbul. He wrote about 300 books and has more than 1,200 tapes.