I Get to Know the Quran

Military service was over. All the friends I had met there and had always been together with were leaving before me. Because they had arrived before me. Two of them left two days earlier, and one a day earlier. But all of them waited for me before going. We met at a hotel. How beautiful freedom is. To sit down, to drink even a glass of tea, but freely, not under pressure, not intimidated. Of course I wanted them to wait for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell them to wait. That felt like a selfish wish to me. But because they waited for me, I was both glad and grateful. Generally everyone had just cleared off. As for us, we said we would go together, first to Antalya and then to Alanya. For two months we had all lived together under certain conditions, but now the conditions, the circumstances, were different. I don’t know whether we wanted to get to know one another this way too. Perhaps ours was simply sharing our joy, without thinking about anything. They went straight to a brothel in Antalya. I said I wouldn’t go. There was one more friend; he even had two wives. One Turkish, one German; he was going to live with the German by civil marriage, and with the Turkish woman by religious marriage. Later I heard that he was never able to be happy at all. Anyway, this friend seemed somewhat religious. Whether he practiced this religiousness out of love, I doubt it. Maybe he had been raised that way and that was why, I don’t know. He had no knowledge of God whatsoever. But when I said “I won’t go,” he too was influenced and said, “I won’t go either.” The other two friends kept insisting, “please come and take a look.” And I turned it into a joke, saying, “I wouldn’t come just for his sake anyway.” They realized we were determined and went. We were waiting in the car. Quite a while passed, hours went by, and they didn’t come. The one beside me began to grow curious. Every now and then he said, “come, let’s go take a look and see what happened to them.” But I kept putting it off, because for me going there meant a very great temptation. In the end he couldn’t bear it any longer and said, “come on, let’s go.” And I, always trying to put it off, kept saying, “you go then, and I’ll just wait here alone in the car; maybe they’ll come in the meantime and you won’t have gone for nothing, and I’ll send one of them right after you,” but it was in vain. I would have to go no matter what. Fine, I said, and inside I was thinking: “Are you this weak? Wherever it may be, if a person is valuable, places and conditions do not spoil that value.” And again inside I mused: “When gold falls into the mud, is its quality spoiled?” So we went into those houses no matter what; we looked into each one, where are they, or did something happen. All those women were looking at us invitingly, and each one more beautiful than the last. “How easy it would be to spend a night with them,” I was thinking. Yet if a person saw such women on the street, he would say inside, “a thing like this could never happen.” But here these women became yours for money, as if they were rental cars. There is perhaps a car a person may never be able to buy, but when he rents it, well, for that day it becomes his. And can a person really be compared to a car? Sadly, that is how it is. As much as we looked, I came out as though I were ice, but inside me volcanoes were erupting. We couldn’t find our friends, we went to the car, and they too came out one by one afterward.

I myself was amazed at this business. In astonishment I kept thinking to myself, how was this possible, that I came back without doing anything. I was glad; having a strong will made me glad. Reading the Holy Scriptures just once had produced in me this desire, these changes. In the course of a year while I was reading the Holy Scriptures, those elderly Witnesses had perhaps come, all of them, ten times. But that the knowledge I gained lying in my bed while reading would change me, I could never have imagined.

Later, one more day, we stayed together in Alanya and then parted from one another. I was going to go to Gemlik, to an apartment my mother had rented without ever having seen it. They had moved there from Istanbul while I was in the military. It was a sooty, hazy December. The house, the furniture, everything was every which way. It was in no way a place to come to just after military service and relax. My mother very much loved that kind of disorder, scattering things about, changing homes frequently. As far as I remember from childhood, we were always moving and changing homes. It’s as if we roamed every district of Istanbul. Surely there were reasons for it too. The furniture didn’t fit into the 130-square-meter apartment! My mother was also living with a man. Agricultural Engineer Nihat Bey had worked in many posts, and after his retirement he had served as a manager at the Ülker factory. I used to call him Nihat baba. He was someone who talked a great deal, someone who adored talking rather than listening. Both of them were elderly. When the man’s belongings were combined with my mother’s, of course the accumulation of two households over the years wouldn’t fit into one apartment. The work fell to me again. Anything can be done, so long as the other person is pleased and values what you have done. My wanting an orderly, comfortable environment was not only for myself; I believed it was comfortable for those people too. Yet my mother placed no value at all on such things. In these kinds of struggles I have waged since childhood, I saw that people have sides that differ greatly from one another; even if it is your mother, your sibling, even your own child, this is so. While someone you have never known, from far away, likes the very things you like and thinks like you on many subjects, those with whom you live so closely, with whom you share the same home, family, and upbringing, are so opposed to one another that a person falls into astonishment. Even so, the person I loved most in the world was my mother. But this love, more than happiness, generally gave pain. After the things I saw from those people in the orphanages, my mother seemed to me like an angel. When I wet myself, she never once even scolded me. My mother was the only one who understood that this situation was not within my control. Perhaps that is why I felt such gratitude. Except for two times, my mother had never beaten any of us. Both of those times were directed at me. The first time she was right, but the second time I still can’t say she was right. My mother too, like every person, was a human being with faults as well as good qualities. In my opinion she was even better toward us, that is, toward her children. She was hospitable toward everyone, generous. She didn’t like going to visit anyone, but she would feed and give drink to everyone, whoever came, and send them off that way. Then she was happy. So the feeling of Jesus Christ’s, “there is more happiness in giving than there is in receiving” (Acts 20:35), naturally weighed heavier in my mother. The majority of humanity, however, has developed within themselves exactly the opposite feeling. For them, the principle “receiving is happier than giving” holds true! Most of all for those who are religious! It may be that the great majority of people are like this, but for religious ones to be so is even more perverse. Because God is generous and loves the one who is generous. So why is it that religious people, on the contrary, love money most of all? While to satisfy a person we call worldly you have to give a great deal, a religious person makes do with very little. But just make sure you give, and let him take! The dream of nearly all young Witnesses while preaching from door to door is to enter through the door of a rich person, and for that rich person to believe what he is told. Of course the underlying thought is obvious. Once this thought has become the principle of their governing bodies, why should he himself think any differently? They too are in the same daydreams! And once he finds such a person, what will he expect from him? All the waters of the dam will now turn and flow toward them. Mostly it has indeed been so. The one who is rich, who must of course be generous, will now share everything he has with them. Does approaching people with this hope please God? But if you pay attention, the Witnesses play no games of chance. Neither lottery nor lotto; even if it were free, they avoid games of chance. Except for those who do it in secret, that is not known. While they believe these to be sin, then what about this! Are only the Witnesses like this? As I said, I have not encountered a single generous person among those who pass themselves off as religious, at least I have not. Among them there were good ones too, wise ones too, knowledgeable ones too, but there was no generous one. Surely such a one exists too, but I did not see him! But I must also say this, that among them very, very few have hosted someone in their home lovingly, without expecting anything. Most importantly, they gave that guest a sense of ease. In my roughly twenty years of association, I have encountered at most two or three families who were like this. But generally they place a great deal of value on material things. The one who knows God clings, as it were, even more tightly to material values. Yet God teaches exactly the opposite values. He wants spiritual things to be valued. For example, Jesus in Matthew 6:19-21 says:

“Stop storing up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal. Rather, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

So it means that whatever we value as treasure, our heart is there too. If so, from this explanation, from my own experiences, from the realities in history, isn’t it clear where the hearts of the religious are? For years they come to your home, they eat and drink, and you only find out even where they themselves live years later. Supposedly they make God known. Yet when you look at their deeds, you say to yourself, “this can’t be.” Inside you muse, “God doesn’t tell people to do such things, nor has He.” When, after a hundred incidents, you can’t bear it any longer and explode, and tell one of them what is inside you, you become the bad one again. Why did you say it. As I said, people have done everything for money. What have wars been fought for, after all? Napoleon too, speaking this truth while conversing with statesmen at a table, put it into words. When he said, “We fight only for money,” the Englishman, belittling him, replied, “We fight for our honor and dignity,” whereupon Napoleon slapped back the answer: “Everyone fights for what he does not have!”

As for those who see money as a master, Jesus Christ:

“No one can slave for two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stick to the one and despise the other. You cannot slave for God and for Riches (mammon, wealth)” says in Matthew 6:24. While these verses direct a person to be measured toward material values, they also absolutely emphasize not confusing God and material things with one another. In the Quran too it is continually said that we should not value this world’s goods and wealth. (Al-Baqarah (2):200) A speaker at one of the Witnesses’ conventions said the following: “Money is a very bad master but a very good servant.” However much they give such sermons for their own benefit, this saying was very true. So it means it depended on with what eye we regarded it. If we hold money above everything, that means it is our God. If we hold pleasure above everything, then this time that means it is our God. If we regard ourselves above everything, then we make ourselves God and deify ourselves. More precisely, whatever and whomever we hold above everything, that means it is our God. If we hold the true God above everything, that means we have put faith in God and have accepted His laws and principles. No one should be expected to say, “I worship money.” A person shows this by his deeds. This value of holding above everything, people can sometimes give to their car, their wife, their jewels, and indeed to the ambition of making a career. In that case the person has put his career, his wife, his car, his jewels, even following fashion, in the place of God, has made an idol of it. For this reason the Holy Scriptures say:

“And to love Him with one’s whole heart and with one’s whole understanding and with one’s whole strength and to love one’s neighbor (people) as oneself is worth far more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” is written in the Gospel, Mark 12:33. By this God indicates that we must give Him our whole strength, understanding, and heart lovingly, with a willing soul. We must approach Him in this way. Not with hypocrisy, as though we were doing some drudgery. In any case, none of these verses give room to egoism, selfishness, or self-interest. Some regard these as worthless little details. Yet these are the fruits of that person, that religion, that state, and so on. A tree cannot be thought of as consisting of a single fruit. It has many fruits that are alike. The more rotten its fruits, the more that tree is called a tree that bears bad fruit. Stinginess, lying, behaving mercilessly, being far from love, being unjust, lying, is each of these not bad fruit, then what is it? All of us have bad fruits. But shouldn’t those who say “without us you cannot be saved” be paid even more attention on these matters? Shouldn’t good fruits be sought in them? This is exactly why religions, whichever it may be, have throughout history produced very bad fruits. But Jesus Christ, so that we would not be deceived, lays down a beautiful rule. By saying “By their fruits you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:15-20), He holds a light up for us and gives us a measure.

In that newly moved-into, wretched environment, I don’t really know whether I had the opportunity to talk with my mother about my beliefs, about the things I had newly begun to learn. But a few days later it surely happened. Did they receive it as, “here’s a new notion,” again I don’t know. But in the future, whatever I did, right or wrong, in line with my knowledge concerning God, my mother would be among those who opposed it most. We were not religious at all. In the world, a hatred toward the religious had in any case already begun in the 20th century. The countries we call communist had broken off all their claws. We cannot call them unjust, but neither can we call them just. Alongside the dry wood they surely burned the green as well. In our own case too, the coming of Atatürk and the republic to Turkey meant the taking away of the power of the religionists from their hands. This too was something many people received with sympathy. After all this, my mother’s generation naturally looked with a cold eye upon things done in the name of religion. I still concede they were quite right. They arrived at this conclusion without making great investigations as I did, by what they heard, what they saw, by their natural feelings.

A person opposes some things but cannot explain them. Or, to understand some things, one need not see very, very many negative events. With tiny, nauseating things a person immediately takes a stance against that thing. Just because he has no knowledge on the subject does not necessarily mean that he is mistaken. Are decisions made in ignorance like games of chance? It is hard to lay down a definite rule. There are many good things we do unknowingly. We have done them without even predicting their outcome. Alongside this there are bad things done, and these yield, or have yielded, good results. For example, in an event that occurs in the Holy Scriptures and in the Quran, the brothers’ selling of Joseph as a slave was a bad thing, yet God steers it in a way that will yield good results. (Genesis 45:5-8) But the thing the brothers who sold him did was surely bad. By these things I am not supporting a fatalistic notion. Moreover, whether good or bad, we will be held personally responsible for what we do. Just because the thing we did was bad and God steered it toward good does not mean we are saved, or that the evil we did was even good. It is God who steers a bad thing toward the good direction; the evil, however, comes out of us. God does not make us do the evil; we ourselves do it. The one who corrects, who extends a helping hand, is only God. Sharper questions will arise in connection with this subject, and I will deal with these too in later topics. For example: if Jesus Christ had to die as a sacrifice, had to give himself up, then why are those who killed him guilty? I will surely touch upon the answers to this and similar questions. I do not want to leap from branch to branch too much in my book. If possible, I want to gather the topics in particular places, but I also see that I have not managed it. My aim is to strive so that this book will be in a form everyone can understand. Because the words used in connection with these subjects, as I said, are not often used in our everyday life. For this reason I am often obliged to make explanations. I hope that this time too the other topic isn’t flying out of your mind.

I had come to Turkey having taken a leave of three months total. Two months had passed in the military, and one week in coming and going on the roads. I could stay with my mother only three more weeks. Although I hadn’t asked her for it, and at a time I hadn’t expected, before bed my mother brought a red book and said: “Take this Turkish Holy Quran; it was mine, let it be yours.” With feelings I couldn’t understand, I took it at once. Would this book, like the Holy Scriptures, draw my interest? More than anything, it was an important book for me. In any case, all my knowledge came from the Holy Scriptures, which I had finished reading in a year. I began to read the Quran too. It was written in a different style. It didn’t have the style of the Holy Scriptures. But the events recounted in the Quran I understood at once. In the Quran the events were very short, indeed recounted in a way that someone who does not know the Holy Scriptures could not understand at all. Events recounted like a long story in the Holy Scriptures were told disjointedly in the Quran. Çetin Altan had a book called “Kopuk Kopuk” (“Disjointed”); that came to my mind. This book of mine, in my opinion, could also be called disjointed. With that Quran that came into my hands, I was, without knowing it, going to fall into the midst of great debates, conflicts, hatreds. I, however, did it with pleasure and still feel pleasure. A prophecy concerning Jesus Christ is emphasized, and it reads, “They hated me without cause.” In these words I have found much courage, consolation, strength. But my having these feelings does not necessarily show that the things I do and believe are right. For the sake of their beliefs, people have done such absurd, such bad things, knowingly or unknowingly. They too have expressed the strength, faith, and support they received in the very same way. Yet when one looks at history, a person says, “God absolutely cannot have supported what those people did.” Yet those people always attributed this support and this strength to God. Because I knew this even in those days, I never tried to leave my faith to my feelings and the like. You will say, can there be faith without feeling. I cannot say that there absolutely is not, one hundred percent. I tried to obtain my belief as impartially as I could, giving room to reason, to knowledge, to research, and most importantly to these books, which we might call the documents in our hands. Perhaps without being aware of it, I strove for it to be scientific, that is, proven. Because in science there is no feeling. That is, a person saying, “I feel that the world is round,” would be unscientific. Or saying, “I have an inner sense that says two times two is four,” even if the result is true, these things cannot be proven by feelings alone. Religions, unfortunately, are very poor in these matters. If you seek, if you ask for the answer to something, whoever that authorized clergyman is cannot say, “I don’t know the answer to this.” He says a great deal, none of it is an answer, but he does not say “I don’t know,” he cannot say it. Why this is a matter of pride, I cannot know. And he is also afraid of stepping outside the religious knowledge taught to him. If his own religious authorities have told him “the answer to such-and-such question is this,” then that’s that. Whether it is right or wrong, the answer to that question is that, for him. Whether he understands it or not is not important. And he cannot explain it either. He says, “this is this, that’s that,” and continues that way. And if a sincere person, one who seeks the answers to questions with his whole heart, comes before him, even the most honest and diligent among them searches and searches and gives you the answer, saying, “here, in our book this explanation is given on this subject.” You read it, and in that answer you see, and point out, a host of inconsistencies and gaps. This time that person stamps you with words like “proud, conceited, stubborn, brainless.” And you ask, as if pleading: “Please, perhaps I may be understanding, thinking wrongly, but can this subject not also be thought of the way I say? Am I the only one who thinks this way?” Once you’ve said that, very few, but so few as to be almost none, show enough courage to say sincerely, “it may be, I understand you.” Even that one, in the end, says, “but you should still believe what we have shown.” Yet even if a person says, “all right, since you want it that way, then I too will believe that way,” can you call this a true faith? Can there be love in such a faith?

The subjects I mentioned above have turned out like some mysterious description. When I explain them by giving examples, I believe you will understand better. Here, by reading the Quran, I was, without knowing it, going to enter into the very midst of these events I have spoken of.