The Quran, the Witnesses, and Hospitality

January 11, 2004 – Sunday

By now I had plenty of time. I had read the Quran too. It was not as long as the Holy Scriptures. It was a book roughly the size of the Gospel. I read it very quickly. As I said, I was no longer working either. If I said I was reading books all day and all night, that would be a bit of an exaggeration, but if I said I was reading on average eight hours a day, I would not be lying. The Quran was written in a different style, that is, in a different manner of narration. There, the events passed in a disjointed, fragmentary way. Because I had read the Holy Scriptures beforehand, I also knew in detail how the events mentioned there had actually taken place. For this reason, all those events being mentioned would immediately come alive before my eyes. To myself, I would think, “how will those who read no book other than this one, and who do not believe in that other one, grasp these events and their meanings?” Because Muslims do not even acknowledge the Holy Scriptures. Granted, by their works they do not acknowledge the Quran either, but never mind. Because according to them the Holy Scriptures are the book of the infidels! They even shrink from taking it into their hands. In schools, in religion classes, in mosques, in writings and magazines, they have always received information in this direction. As for the question, “How many of those who say ‘I am a Muslim’ have read the Quran in their own language, and, if possible, investigated it?”—it is better if we do not even ask it. The answer is terrifying, because they are so few as to be almost none.

Before I read the Quran and the Holy Scriptures, I felt nothing toward them. More precisely, I neither believed nor disbelieved. What could I say about things I did not know? As far as I had learned from the Witnesses and from Josef, the Quran was not the word of God. Those people, on the other hand, had left a good impression on me regarding the Holy Scriptures. It could be so; if the Quran were not from God, I would think to myself, “they are telling the truth.” I thought that they had surely investigated and learned. Then why did I read the Quran? More than anything, there was one thing I knew very well. First of all, I would explain this truth to those closest to me, to my loved ones. And they—my mother, my father, my wife, my siblings, and many of my other acquaintances—were all Muslims. I could also predict how they would react to me. Whether they believed or not, when I said “the Gospel—the Torah,” they would say, “you should have read your own book first, son.” They would use the Quran, just as my brother did, merely as a shield to argue against me. Besides these reasons, the most important reason was myself. I said, “even I would ask.” Would a person leap headlong into another religion without investigating the religion in which he was born and raised? And if he did, that person would be someone thinking only of himself, a foolish one. Because everyone would ask him “why?” Yet more than the question of “why,” helping those people is also an important reason. If a person is striving to establish a good connection between himself and God, he learns that he is also obliged to love people. In fact, these should always be the traits of people who investigate sincerely and from the heart in order to find the truth. These reasons compelled me to read the Quran. When I say compelled—even if I had had no reason at all, after reading so many books, it would have been very shameful not to read the book that hundreds of millions of people say “I believe in.” I had begun reading the Holy Scriptures with this very thought. Why should the same thought not hold true for the Quran?

In my book I will speak much of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. My real aim is not so much to disparage them, but only to present them as an example along the path they follow. Their behaviors, their attitudes, their reactions, their manner of belief, and so on—in short, out of many, they will be just one example. To me, none of them is much different from another. As the Witnesses are, so are the Muslims, and so are the Christians and the Jews. The only difference is in how seriously that person takes this business. According to my beliefs and views, the spirit that predominates in them is also from the same source. But this source is not God. Because at bottom, all their works resemble one another. Whatever they do, they do not do it because they love God. They do not know Him, so how could they love Him! They do not want to know Him, so how could they know whether or not they would love Him. The difference between them has become something like a matter of color and taste. Color all the religions according to their varieties, and choose the color you like. The one who is inside that religion, however, cannot even use this freedom of choosing among the colors; because that colored ribbon is tied to him from birth. And without ever thinking or investigating whether it is right or wrong, he clings and binds himself to it, like his own name.

The more intense a person’s attachment to a religion or a sect, the more difficult—indeed impossible—it becomes to prove something to him, to explain, to convince. Bring whatever proofs you wish. However many verses you show him from the book he believes in, and however much you try to explain it to him with sufficient logic and examples, that person will neither listen, nor investigate, nor read. Because he has, as it were, handed his belief over into the proxy of other people. This situation can be likened to hiring a lawyer. The person who hires a lawyer gives his lawyer a document called a power of attorney. This is a contract stating that you have authorized that lawyer to act in your name. Otherwise that lawyer would not be able to represent you before the law. From then on, whatever that lawyer says or does in your name, it means you have accepted it. In just this way, people, in their relationship with God, hire people like themselves, religions, organizations, sects, and orders, as though they were lawyers, and they authorize them. Their behavior and beliefs come to mean: “You believe on our behalf, you have faith on our behalf, you explain these books on our behalf, and whatever you say, we will do.” But does a person put a lawyer in between himself and his father, who gives him everything? Those people say they do this because they are afraid of making mistakes in their relationship with God. The example I gave of the lawyer is very fitting for that. A lawyer, too, is hired so that we do not make mistakes before the law. It may be that a person can establish a relationship with his father in such a formal way. But that person must then also not expect anything more from his father than to be treated with the same formality. As I said, all of this stems from a lack of love. And such people deceive themselves, saying, “in any case, they will give account on our behalf.” Yes, let us say they will give account for themselves and for you—but will this save you and make you sinless? By doing what they say and obeying them, will you be cleansed of all those crimes just because they made you do them? In the example of Adam and Eve, were they able to save either themselves or their children with such a defense?

In the past, if someone had explained these things to me this way, I would not have believed it; I would have said this man is crazy—but humanity is in exactly this condition. Open the history books about these matters and read them. For thousands of years they show those rulers, priests, hodjas, rabbis, organizations, and so on as having been imposed upon people like a plague. Even if this has a partly true side, in reality: it was the people themselves who were very eager to bring such people over their heads, saying, “Have the authority to do everything for us.” And the people they brought to power, in time, made their lives a misery. I will return to the details of these matters often in the future, also adding the pages I have published on the internet.

I had read the Quran, but of course I had not understood all of it. Perhaps, as with the Holy Scriptures, I had understood a great deal and at the same time nothing at all. But if any picture remained in my mind about these two books, it was that I could find nothing to object to. When I say something—I found neither the things the Muslims say against the Holy Scriptures, nor the things the Christians say about the Quran, nor anything else bad. Most important of all, this book did not even write down all the rules, laws, and festivals that the Muslims hold to with such great importance. I might not have understood it. They had been occupied with this business for years, and I thought, “they surely know better than I do.”

I began to speak of these matters to my brother, who was closest to me and a year and a half older than I. When we came together on weekends, I would tell him that these books were interesting books, and I would recount the events in them to him as stories. These matters were surely something different for him, as they were for me. However, my brother was someone who had no faith in God or anything of the kind. He had never had any interest in it. Neither as a child nor later did I ever even see him praying. I cannot say the same for my elder sister. She was three years older than I. She was a believer. But later I would come to see that she believed not in the true God, but, like so many others, only in a God she had created out of her own head and heart. In twenty years of experience, my encountering—or even hearing about—people who want to believe in God in the way that God has revealed Himself would not amount to even the fingers of one hand. They say you cannot tell who has faith or who has money. This saying too surely has a true side. We are human, and we look at people with that eye. The LORD, however, sees people with an entirely different eye. So take these words of mine only as my own feelings, views, and experiences. I would very much wish to have been mistaken on many matters. Because the matters that will be mentioned here are painful, bitter, ugly, terrifying things—indeed, in my view, more terrifying than death. That is why I have very much wanted to be mistaken about the things you will read in this book.

My brother began to grow very bored of the things I was telling him. He would say, “isn’t there any other subject?” I wondered what on earth we used to talk about, apart from the times when we were not fighting. What was there, really, in these subjects? Weren’t these subjects more valuable than passing our time with utterly empty things? And besides, these were things he had never known, never heard of. They concerned him personally as well. Having no one of his own, on weekends he would come to me out of necessity, when he was bored. He would generally spend the weekend with us, and on Sunday evening he would leave after a fight. It was generally always like this. Friday would be fine, and on Sunday, once his business was done, another fight, another curse, as he was leaving. The Holy Scriptures, the Quran, and these subjects were different from all of that. And as for people, I believed within myself, “no one can be evil; it is only that they do not know, and that is why they do wrong.” I had a firm conviction: “this brother of mine, too, if he learns, will surely become good, will learn goodness and love it, because it is not man but God who wants these things.” I no longer let myself be upset by the things he did. Ever since childhood, our relationship as siblings had passed in constant fighting and quarreling. From now on, I thought, let me make a change—perhaps they too will be influenced—and I began to show great tolerance. Rather than flaring up and getting angry immediately, I strove to become a calm, gentle person. I was to strive to hold to these standards not only toward my relatives, but toward everyone. Sometimes it was not at all easy. Those who saw this change, however, began to swell up against me all the more. And the one who did this to me most of all was the person I called my brother.

One day he telephoned me again. “Say, these men have even learned Turkish in order to turn us away from our religion,” he was saying. In an excited and at the same time mocking voice. “And they are boys as young as us,” he said, adding, “but they don’t even believe in the Quran.” As if he believed in it himself! I said: “Let them in and just listen.” He said: “I don’t have time now, but come on such-and-such a day,” adding, “and on that very day I’ll leave the house so they can’t find me.” I was practically begging, “don’t do that, just listen.” What else did he have to do? He was living in a room of six or seven square meters, spending all his earnings—and just as much again in borrowed money—on his pleasures and his car. “If you come too, I’ll listen,” he said. Just then it was snowy winter, and the distance between us was fifty kilometers. Though I did not want to, I said, “all right, I’ll come.” On that very day we were waiting in his room when the bell rang. Since he lived on the top floor, when someone came it naturally took a while for that person to climb up. And I was astonished when I saw them. Two German youths, about twenty or twenty-one years old, were speaking Turkish. I had seen such a thing for the first time. Our brother-in-law was German, but even after twenty years I had never seen him form a single sentence in Turkish. He would only say certain words now and then. Moreover, the Germans hardly ever wanted to take the trouble, on any matter, for the smallest useful thing in Turkish. Those first Turks who came to Germany, thinking there were pictures of cows on the cans, bought and ate dog food. Later on, pictures of dogs were put on those cans. But these very young boys were going door to door in a place like Germany to proclaim what they believed. And for this they had learned Turkish. What German would do—or had done—such a thing! I was very impressed by this diligence of the Witnesses. We began to talk. One of them had a very bad accent, but once you got used to it, it became understandable. From the other’s speech you could hardly tell he was German at all. We welcomed them very warmly, and since they went along with this atmosphere, a pleasant mood arose among us. There was nothing in the room but a single bed, so my brother and I sat on the floor. The conversation passed with mutual questions of getting acquainted. Our curiosity was greater than theirs, so we were asking them questions—how they had learned Turkish, why Turkish and not some other language, and the like. And they would explain. I kept waiting for them to enter into matters concerning God. One way or another, we got into the subject. Our fellow immediately said “the Quran.” His aim was only to argue. If only I did not know him! Among those who pass for Muslims, there is hardly anyone who does not resort to this method. In my opinion their aim is not to ask questions and learn, but to argue. I too had argued, but in a different way and with a different aim. Everyone asks a few questions, however absurd they may be by their own lights. And the answer he receives either influences him for the better or angers him. I took the Quran out of my bag. My aim was to try to show that both books write the same things. But when that boy with the bad accent saw the Quran in my possession, I also saw his face screw up.

I think we talked in that tiny room for an hour or two. Then, since there was a pizzeria in the building right next door, we went there. I did not want to eat anything, but I ordered a drink. Back then I still smoked. When I lit a cigarette I also offered them one. I knew the Witnesses only from that old husband and wife who came to me, and I also knew that they believed smoking to be a sin. According to our upbringing at the time, I offered it anyway out of courtesy. They said, “we never use tobacco; God does not like such things.” Around then my brother had also quit smoking. He would quit and start again. Sometimes he would not smoke for a whole year and then start again. Since this happened often, we had gotten used to it. Only, whatever he himself does, he wants everyone else to do too. If he has quit smoking, you must quit too! In this very incident, he made an issue of my smoking, and mockingly threw stones at me in front of them. And they, getting caught up in that mood, took his side. Despite this, what the Witnesses said about smoking was true. But their being against me pleased my brother very much. Ever since our childhood, he loved to disparage me. As I said, since he had no one of his own, he would generally befriend my friends, and then because of him I would be forced to break with them. Or he would always disparage me behind my back, like an enemy of mine. When I paid attention, though, I saw that he was actually doing this to everyone. It was not only toward me. But sometimes I also saw that he did it very slyly and with malicious intent. That is, a person speaks in a moment’s anger, blusters and rants, and even if it is under the influence of anger, these are words that come from within. But if the fuel in this one was anger, that fuel never ran out! I did not mind him, because I knew my brother! But I did pay attention to what the others were doing. At first glance they had felt sympathy not for me but for him, and besides, they had seen the Quran in my hand. And by nature he was calmer than I, with a two-faced makeup. This too, in my opinion, made him appear gentle. Of course I was very glad of this situation. To myself I would say: “Never mind, let him learn, let him just get started, however it turns out.” After the pizzeria, we went to my house, fifty kilometers away. We sat until midnight. There were not many deep spiritual subjects. One of them was named Bernd; the one with the bad accent was named Schmid. If I am not mistaken, Schmid was around nineteen or twenty at the time. His outward appearance resembled a Turk very much. And this, in my opinion, was his greatest problem. Bernd was probably two years older than he. Bernd was a calm, gentle-natured person. If I said he was someone in whose presence everyone would feel at ease, I probably would not be making a mistake. In my view, when this goes to excess, it too can become a great trap for a person. At that time I never imagined that our association with this friend would continue to this day, despite a host of obstacles and prohibitions. Although he loved money and his own interest in money-related matters very much, his calm and gentle nature covered over these bad traits of his. I always tried to see the good sides of them. Though from time to time, for their own interest, I told them their faults to their faces, neither they changed nor did I.

Before we parted at midnight, they said that there were also meetings held in Turkish. They wanted us to come there. This had caught our interest. Because whenever religion was mentioned, only old people came to mind. That young people, our own age, valued God even if only in appearance, was not an everyday event to be met with in the street. The others who came to me had also often invited me to the meetings held in their own language, that is, in German, but I had not wanted to go. So as not to be rude, I went once. At their meetings, naturally, the people close to them were also their own age. There were young people too; they had come to the meeting with their parents. And besides, to me they were strangers. Or perhaps I perceived that atmosphere. But the things spoken and so on had not interested me all that much. It was not in my own language; to understand, I first had to think. And meanwhile I would miss the other words. Because these subjects had to reach a person’s heart. They were not simple, superficial things that you understand without thinking. When someone says apple or pear, I picture it immediately; I have no need to think at all. But these subjects were not as simple as apple or pear. And even though we had lived in Germany for years, this language being used was hardly ever used in daily life. That is, for us it was like a new language. That is why, when it was said “there is a Turkish meeting too,” we became interested. But the most important reason was Bernd and Schmid. Otherwise we would not have gone to that meeting—a round trip of a full 200 kilometers away—at the crack of dawn on a Sunday. Moreover, their momentary friendship had pleased us. Whereas they were giving reports for these visits they made to us, and doing all of this with an understanding of it as duty and obligation! For me, because God would be involved in the business, going there was very important.

For my own part, I was impressed by the togetherness of this first meeting of ours. For example, the matter of smoking. Even though they did it as if mocking, influenced by my brother, they were right. I did not suppose that anyone was thinking of me anyway. Even if the subject was argued against or mocked, the subject that was mocked was true. This situation had been troubling me anyway. So that it would not smell of smoke, I never smoked in the living room and in many parts of the house. I would either go down to the cellar and out into the garden and smoke there, or I would smoke in the kitchen. There we had a stove, and when you held the tip of the cigarette to its opening, it drew all the smoke inside. Those who saw this would laugh with me: “Yours isn’t smoking, it’s torture.” The smell of the cigarette was also unpleasant afterward. And sometimes I know that I prayed to God even while I had a cigarette in my hand. When I say prayed to God, it would be more accurate to say I talked with Him.

We are not even required to assume a special posture while praying. The forms of prayer that the Muslims, the Christians, indeed the Jews perform are not God’s command; at most they are only their own arrangement. If I say it is to provide order in worshiping in public places, then why do they worship in that same way at home too? If I say it is because it comes from within them, that is also impossible to believe. In the Holy Writings, including the Quran, there is no fixed rule as to the form of worship. The intent of the verse that says to bow down in prostration is in the sense of respect. It is not a description of the ritual prayer or anything of the kind. Salât means to exalt; and “to rise for the salât” means “to rise to worship, to exalt God.” Again I state: there are no fixed rules for the form of worship. If we absolutely must look for a rule, it is to approach God with a whole heart full of love and respect, and to do this business with a sincere spirit rather than with the body. This is what God expects from people as worship. On this matter, since the Jews, like the Muslims, defend, with knowledge stemming from the old law, worshiping God in a certain place and form, Jesus the Messiah answers a woman who believed thus as follows (for certain rules were valid only until Jesus came):

“…But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,” He says, in the Gospel—John 4:19-26.

This, then, is the true form of worship. A person must come before God with words that come from his spirit, from within, not with words he does not understand. Yet on this subject of the rules of worship alone, the Muslim world has, under the names of “ritual prayer and supplication,” rule-bound books two or three times thicker than the Quran. Not a single rule written in them can they reconcile with the verses of the Quran. To those children who have never read the Quran in their own language and have never even been encouraged to read it, they teach how the ritual prayer is performed—with thick-bound volumes, with figures drawn in black outline, with rules determined down to their very forms. In short, on the subject of how one worships God, they have striven for years, unflinchingly and untiringly, to cram into those tiny minds the endless, meaningless, rigid rules they made up out of their own heads. Some send their children at the age of seven to those mosques, to what they call Quran courses, and expect them to receive an education there until military-service age. And the education they too receive there is almost nothing but learning these rules. When those children perform their ablutions, with which hand will they hold which part first! Is he in a state of ablution, or has his ablution been broken? If he goes into the sea, is his fast broken by swimming? These are the things taught to children of ten, twelve, or sixteen years of age. And this is not counting the beatings those children take and the punishments they receive for the sake of these things. This is only the bodily rules of the ritual prayer, and on top of that there are the supplications of this business, to be recited in Arabic, which he does not understand and never will understand. And if he goes still further, he is to learn Arabic like a native tongue, so that he can read the Quran! And then someone like me is supposed to get up and speak of “the love of God”! And doesn’t the reader think to himself, “Is this business really that simple? We couldn’t even finish the ‘how to perform the ritual prayer’ book without mistakes in our whole youth”? In Islam, from childhood on, God begins to be introduced with these encouragements—and, if you dare, to have that introduced God made lovable.

You read these things that are written and think these people are ignorant, don’t you? You say, “does this brainlessness exist only in our own country?” Come and see the religious ones in America, in Europe. In this book I will speak, ceaselessly and often, of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, of the numerically largest of the Christian religions. Will you call them “ignorant” too? I do not know whether they are clever or ignorant, but seeing that they rule the world, they know very well what they are doing. And is the aim of all these religions really to make God lovable? Are they truly working hard for that? Before deciding in haste what they are working for, come, let us look at their fruits, as Jesus the Messiah said. (Matthew 7:15-23) How many people are there on the earth who know God and truly love Him and feel this love? But how many billions of people are there who, because of religions, of the religious ones, and unfortunately by their means, have drawn away from God in hatred? In your view, in which of these have they succeeded? In making God lovable, or in tearing people away from Him and making them hate Him? Whichever they have succeeded in, this is their fruit and the thing they have striven to accomplish. And besides, the numerical majorities that automatically appear on identity cards and in statistics regarding religions are not a proof of love.

Let us come again to the subject of worship, to the bowing in worship. People have bowed down in prostration even before kings. In Genesis 18:2 it says that the prophet Abraham bowed to the ground even before men he had invited whom he did not know at all. Among the Chinese, the Japanese, in the Far East, bowing before people is still a display of respect. Among us the situation is not much different either. Before God, of course, one bows. Indeed, it is above all before Him that one bows. But this shows our respect; it does not show that worship must absolutely have a certain form. In some translations of the Gospels, the original of the verses that read “worshiped before Jesus” means “prostrated, bowed.” Because the first Gospel was set down in Greek, and in Greek the words for prostrating and for worshiping were understood in synonymous senses, some translations, in order to support Christianity’s absurd doctrine of the Trinity, translated this word as “worship.” Whereas Jesus made no one worship him; on the contrary, he emphasized that if there is one who ought to be worshiped, it is God, and he always showed this in his life. (Matthew 26:38-44; John 20:17) In short, prostrating and worshiping are not the same thing. Even if the same bodily posture is assumed, this business is not done with the same attitude of heart. Even if I bow before many people out of respect, I do not do this before any person with the same attitude of heart with which I do it before God. And that is why the form of our body in worship is not important. Far more important is the love and respect that we feel from the heart toward God. And this too is not necessarily evident from outward appearance. A person can talk with God and pray while sitting, walking, lying down, eating, working, and in every other situation I have not named. Alongside this, of course, God is also worshiped in a quiet, closed room, in a respectful posture, and in a public place too. What I wish to say by these things is that there is no fixed bodily rule or place for approaching God. Again, as I said, if we absolutely want to set a rule, it is love, respect, and exalting God by doing His will. And these too are not immediately evident through the forms taken from outward appearance.

Anyway, let me continue my account without flying from subject to subject. Yes, I would talk with God at every opportunity and open my heart to Him. Now, sometimes, when I did this even with a cigarette in my hand, I began to feel uneasy. Only, it was not in the sense of disrespect. For example, talking with God within myself while eating did not disturb me. But smoking was, in my view too, something God did not want. Who—no matter what age he reaches—wants his child to be addicted to cigarettes? I am speaking of normal people. By now they have even begun to write openly on the packs, “smoking kills.” I can never say that God “wants” us to push ourselves toward death in this way. The Witnesses are unjust and wrong in many respects, but on this matter of smoking I grant that they are right. But they are not the only religion on this subject. The Mormons (this too is a religion)—setting cigarettes aside, they regard even drinking black tea or coffee as a sin. By this they mean to indicate that black tea and coffee are harmful to human health. It is not only the Witnesses who avoid certain foods and drinks; there are even more fanatical ones—that is what I want to emphasize. Yes, I had to quit smoking. Not merely because I was thinking of myself, but first of all I had to do this because I loved God.

My first wife smoked a great deal. Once I had said, “do you love me?” She had said, “yes.” When I said, “well then, do you love me more than this cigarette?” she, understanding the situation, tried to dismiss the subject, saying, “don’t talk nonsense, what has one to do with the other?” I wanted her to quit, or at least to cut down. She smoked those never-ending, sour-smelling Maltepe cigarettes. And this would come to almost one, indeed sometimes even two packs a day. The very question I had asked my wife then came to my mind too. So if I too could not quit smoking, then—by my own logic—I loved the cigarette more than God. Well, so it was, I had asked my wife this by the same logic. Whereas I generally smoked five or six cigarettes a day, and even those with holders that trapped the nicotine and tar. Those holders were not like the ones today. I cleaned them out myself with spirit, opening up the inside. Even when I went into the army, I took the holder and the materials needed for cleaning it with me. Sometimes, when it fills up and that nicotine comes into your mouth, do you know what a disgusting bitterness of taste it has? Those who have smoked with a holder know. It is not even the size of a drop; yet, though it is as small as a mote, it is horribly disgusting. And this is what we draw into our lungs! Perhaps you have heard that a single drop of nicotine kills a rabbit.

Being together with a woman who smelled of cigarettes was ugly. In the matter concerning my wife’s quitting smoking, at one point I had been thinking of myself too. Whereas God thinks only of our good. Quitting smoking was painful and hard for me. While I was pleading with God in a very great distress, a voice, as if from my conscience, spoke these words: “Are you now asking help from a God for whose sake you cannot yet even sacrifice a cigarette?” That day I gave my word and I quit smoking. Still, 24 years have passed, and I have not smoked even a single one. Sometimes in my dreams I see myself smoking. I wake in fear, and when I realize it was a dream, I rejoice.

Back then I had given God my word, “I will quit smoking,” but I clenched my teeth with difficulty for only a week or two. Within myself I kept thinking of smoking again. I even deceived myself, saying: “But I gave my word, I did not swear an oath.” However, at that time my going to the meetings of the Witnesses was of great benefit to me on this subject. Just as I was thinking these very things, the speaker that Sunday gave a talk on “the importance of giving one’s word.” He showed, right from the text with verses, that “God requires the soul of the person who gives his word and does not keep it.” Giving one’s word for God was very important. It was actually the same in meaning as swearing an oath. An oath is made in the name of God, and giving one’s word appears to be merely something used among people. But in both cases, when a person does not keep it, he becomes plainly a liar, and this is a thing God hates. There are many mistakes and sins we commit, but if we are not deliberately practicing as much as we know, and are doing exactly the opposite, then we must surely pay the price. And generally this price is very heavy. From that talk I listened to, I too now had sufficient knowledge on the subject of smoking and, connected to it, on the subject of the word I had given to God. I still see this talk as though it had been given only for me. From all the things I listened to throughout the talk, and the proofs I read from the Holy Scriptures, I learned that I now had to erase smoking thoroughly from my mind. Because I too had given my word. The person who gave the talk was an ordinary one. In later years I paid attention to him at conventions and so on, wondering whether it had been the speaker’s ability that had influenced me. No—on the contrary, he was not at all a talented speaker or anything of the kind. But the verses he showed and the idea he defended in connection with this subject were true. And these were what had influenced me. Later on I would come to know talented speakers too. However effective they may be, if the person is not resolved to change himself, then for the listener that speaker becomes like a good singer. In short, if a person does not give those words a place in his heart, their effect is also zero. (Ezekiel 33:31-32) So it means I was influenced by the words rather than by the speaker. Moreover, this subject of smoking never appears in the Holy Scriptures either. It does not say plainly, “do not smoke.” There was no such thing as cigarettes back then, so how could it say it? But there is a principle, and it is in 2 Corinthians 7:1: “Keep your body and your spirit clean.” That cigarettes keep the human body clean can most certainly not be said. In the same way, eating and feeding others spoiled food is not right either. Cases of dire necessity excepted—but to eat, or to sell, spoiled meat needlessly, out of laziness, or out of stinginess, is like smoking cigarettes, hashish, heroin. Or to offer people food prepared in filth is the same thing. Of the things I have listed, only the doses and effects differ. One who steals a bicycle and one who steals a car are both thieves. Because the car is more valuable, that person is neither more of a thief, nor is the one who steals the bicycle any less of one. Only, the penalty those persons will pay before the law differs in material terms. But this does not save them from being thieves. Because theft, whatever its amount and value, does not conform to God’s principles. Just as, for someone meticulous who tries to keep his body clean, his smoking cigarettes would leave no meaning to this meticulousness and cleanliness.

Actually, besides the health problems of this cigarette, wasn’t its smell also disturbing me? Not only the smell of cigarettes; when I was cooking too, if I had put the lid on the pot—and I put it on so that the smell would not escape—when I needed to check the food, I would hold the pot or pan out the window toward the street and open its lid that way. When a big cloud of smoke came out, I would always rejoice like a child. “Oh! Otherwise this greasy vapor-smoke would have spread through the room, and we would have stunk to high heaven.” Later we got exhaust fans and connected them to the chimney so the smell would go out, but even so it doesn’t work completely. There are very expensive ones, ones with powerful motors. In my opinion, even if the smell doesn’t go a hundred percent, a person can reduce it to very little. My wife, however, to whom I have now been married for nearly twenty-five years, still pays no attention at all to such things. Go into the closed bathroom—if she is cooking, you will know it from the smell. What I mean to say is that not every person perceives such disturbances of smell the same way. Although the greatest reason that drew me away from cigarettes was my giving my word, I have naturally also tried to express how I loathed cigarettes.

On winter days, in those big four- or five-story department stores with escalators, as some people passed by me I would smell the food odor on their clothes. Some Turks generally smelled of grease and cigarettes. In the very cold winter months, even many people’s clothes smelled this way. Because it is cold, they don’t air the place out. And another reason this problem arises is that Turks mostly cook their food at home. Germans don’t really cook food at home in the pot-and-pan manner. Especially if both husband and wife are working. They generally eat salami, sausages, or ready-made things. And since döner has come to nearly every village, they solve that food problem too by getting döner, chicken, or pizza. As for the old-timers—if a German doesn’t stink up his home with sauerkraut, the German national dish, then he is no German anyway. Young people always take the easy way. Generally they all buy very expensive kitchens for their homes, but out of fear that work will come of it, they can’t even make coffee for anyone. It cannot be said that the Turks were not affected by this situation either. This state of doing nothing suited the new generation growing up here too. Their famous hospitality thus went down the drain. In fact this ought to be within a person. Generosity, self-sacrifice, love—if these are done by force, the quality is spoiled. At the same time they bring unhappiness, and even turn into hatred. This was so while living in Turkey too. Those people practiced hospitality by force, out of fear of society, out of fear of gossip. How many do it from within, gladly, feeling happiness? Whatever people are going to do, they do it looking at the person before them. If, in their view, the guest is a valuable person, the rule holds that where a goose is to come, a chicken is not begrudged. Many people are also aware that this is how it is. That is why, if you show someone great value in a hospitable way, that person takes the honor upon himself and thinks to himself, “look how valuable I must be, that they treat me this way.” People have become so corrupted, their consciences so seared, that either they are shown no value at all, or, when someone gives value at random, they again take the honor not upon the one who gave value, but upon themselves. In their view everything rests on self-interest. The Germans, on the other hand, are terrified when someone treats them well out of the blue. They become uneasy, wondering what this person is going to want from me. So as not to remain in debt, they look right away to give something they see as a corresponding return—a drink, some chocolate, or the like. And by now, weighing it so that it is of equal value to whatever you gave them or whatever you did. Of course it is good for people to give one another things, to show their appreciation and gratitude. But whether or not this is done with such an attitude of heart, you soon come to understand in time. Just as you almost never see that person again, so too there is, as it were, ice between you. You understand that whatever it was you did, in reality by the thing he gives he means as it were to say, “take this and shut your mouth; I owe you nothing at all.” These are the proud, just Germans! And there are also the shameless ones among them, who are just like a cooper’s adze that cuts only toward itself. Once he senses that you are generous, in everything he takes from you he assumes the posture of doing you a favor as well. That is, even his greeting you is, in his view, a great favor, a gift! That is why we Turks have practically stopped short of licking their behinds. And they, for their part, have made a show of feeling obliged to endure every heartfelt thing those Turks did. That is, if the man is offering halva—here, take, eat—and on top of that he insisted, the German swallows it with great difficulty, as it were. And sometimes they are right to feel bothered by this senseless insistence. These are problems valid for both cultures. The Turk gives halva, and to please him gives wine too. And afterward, once he has seen his smiling face, he surely comes back with some trouble of his! With endless, never-ending troubles. Once a person sets about disparaging a society, if he is impartial he sees that both sides have many shortcomings. The color and form may differ. But generally the Germans are afraid of someone who behaves well and with a smiling face right away. I too am afraid, thinking, wait and see what will come of it. But since I myself know these situations, I have tried not to be defeated by such feelings of mine. And God, from time to time, indeed emphasizes that it is very wrong—or can be—for us to act according to our emotions and feelings. (Jeremiah 17:9)

People are always disparaging one another. Perhaps this is the easiest thing. Say of a person you have never known that he is bad, and this will surely stick to him. But this does not mean that you are someone who understands everything at a glance from a distance. Yes, humanity may be faulty, flawed, and even bad. And that is why your views about that person may hold true, more or less, like the fortune-teller women. But until we look at people always with an eye for how they have a fault, why is one never looked at with an eye for how one has good sides? It is hard to find a person’s good trait, but hard things bring happiness. To tear down is very easy, but to build; the hard thing is to build. In the building of a bridge, thousands of workers, engineers, tools, and equipment labor, and finishing it takes years. But to tear it down, sometimes even a single person is enough. Placing the bombs where he will place them and tearing it down does not take that person even a few hours. Sometimes even pressing a button is enough to destroy it. To be constructive, to build, is hard, but beautiful; to tear down is easy and ugly. We live in a time when much effort is spent for human relationships to come to such a destructive state. Human relationships and friendships of long years are also just like the building and tearing down of the bridge in this comparison. Relationships that have been good for years, indeed for a whole lifetime, vanish in an instant. The self-sacrifices, the friendships, the beautiful words, the loves, the times together that the two sides showed one another—it is very easy to tear all these down in an instant with a single wrong behavior or word. It can still be repaired, but this, like building, is hard and toilsome. Most of the time people flee from this toilsome work. Feeding feelings such as hatred, malice, pride, anger, resentment, and jealousy seems, for some reason, easier to them.

On the subject of hospitality, Abraham came to my mind. He bows down and pleads before people he does not know at all, saying to them: “Pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; and after that ye shall pass on,” in Genesis 18:1-8. These are people Abraham had never seen or known. Abraham, on the other hand, was a very rich man; “the land could not bear his wealth,” it says in the book. He has many flocks, animals, male and female slaves. If we were to compare him with the rich of our time, next to them Abraham would actually remain very poor. The three thousand, five thousand sheep, donkeys, and calves that he possessed at that time are, today, a fortune that is the savings of many people not only in wealthy countries but in our country too. The form is different. Instead of a flock of sheep, he has money in the bank, a house, a car, a pension, and so on. In those days these people lived in tents in the desert. There is a saying that they wrung their bread from a stone—well, that is how they earned it. In our time, obtaining fine flour with money is the cheapest of food items. Coarse or whole-grain flour is hardly even sold. In Abraham’s time, even being able to make that fine flour was a terrible labor. And look at his humility—he says to those who came, “come, eat a morsel of bread and comfort your hearts.” Meanwhile he runs at once to his wife and says: “Make ready quickly, prepare cakes from the finest flour.” He runs to the herd and selects a calf from the herd, and gives it to his servant, commanding, “slaughter the young calf and prepare it quickly.” Can you picture all these scenes before your eyes? In the heat of the day, Abraham, sitting calmly at the door of his tent, upon seeing these visitors springs into terrible action. He runs here and there, gives orders to his wife, to his servant.

Now to which woman could one give orders, “make cakes at once for these men I don’t know at all”! And if such an order were given, wouldn’t that woman, instead of dough, shove the husband himself into the oven and make cakes of him in the oven?! And again: wouldn’t she say, “What is this state of yours toward these men passing in the street, from whom you have no interest at all—have you gone mad, man!”? A woman like Sarah does not say this. She is one who, from her heart, from within, addresses her husband even as “my lord.” (Genesis 18:12 and 1 Peter 3:5-6.) How different these examples are from the people of our time, from the religious ones, and above all from the understanding and practices of the women of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who claim that no one but themselves will be saved.

If you noticed, we said, “Abraham has a host of slaves and concubines too.” If such a thing existed in our time, even the best among them would not personally get up and invite those people, but would send his slave and have him say: “Go ask what they want.” Look at the respect in this man, and above all at the love. If he had not loved, he could not have done it at all. That he loves people is certain, because he too is human. Well then, what kind of woman was his wife? Was she some bald, blind, mangy creature? Or was she in such dire need, having no one of her own, that she was forced to obey Abraham? On the contrary. It says in the verse that when Sarah went with her husband Abraham to Egypt, “in all Egypt there was no woman fairer to look upon than she.” Indeed, because Abraham was afraid of his wife’s beauty, so that they would not kill him and take his wife from his hand, he instructed his wife Sarah, “say that this is my brother.” And his wife understood the situation. In the present time, imagine a husband saying such a thing to his wife! For one thing, that man becomes zero in the woman’s eyes. For another, the woman opens her mouth and shuts her eyes. She would start off with, “are you a pimp, you!”—and the rest you can imagine for yourself. And they do this not because they are chaste or anything of the sort; on the contrary, this type of woman is far more expert at arousing men. This fashion is famous in Europe. Once the woman sees another man before her who stirs her, there is nothing she won’t do with the man beside her. And she does this not because she loves the one beside her very much, but to stir up the one before her. As if these women have no homes. And at home they are like cat and dog with each other. That great show is done either to arouse the ones outside, or because they do not want to rein in their animal urges!

The fact, recounted in Genesis 12:10-20, that the king of Egypt took Abraham’s wife Sarah as a wife should not immediately be taken to mean that Sarah went into the king’s bosom. Because when kings married someone, they did not immediately lie with her in bed that very night, as in our time. In any case the king had a host of wives and concubines too. In the Book of Esther, chapter 2 verse 12, it is written that this was the custom of kings. I do not know whether they had more mastery over their appetites and were calmer than the kings of our time, but the haste and impatience of our time they surely did not have. And besides, God is concerned with Abraham and Sarah. Moreover, God would not have permitted such a thing. If it is said, “The God who permits everything in our time—why did He not permit it back then?”—back then too He permitted it, but with Abraham, whom He had chosen, God had a plan. Furthermore, such events were written in the Holy Scriptures also to make God known. And besides, had such a thing happened, it would surely have been recorded in the text. For example, a man lies with Jacob’s daughter without marrying her, and he loves her very much. The man’s father and the man come and plead: “Please give your daughter as a wife to my son.” Even so, two of her brothers, in anger, put all the men living in that city to the sword by a trick, saying, “why did he lie with our sister before marrying her?” That is, they slaughter them, they shed innocent blood. (Genesis 34:18-31) What I wish to say here is that those people did not have the morality, as exists now, for a woman to go into the bosom of someone whose very name she does not know. When I say those people, I mean those who know God. For all these reasons, before Sarah could have such a relationship with the king of Egypt, God had taken His precaution. Otherwise that precaution would have had no meaning either. And the king, upon learning of this situation, immediately gives Abraham’s wife back, because he plainly says that he did not know. (Please look at Genesis 12:10-20 and the verses of Genesis chapter 20.)

Alongside this, there were also societies living at the same time that had sunk very low in terms of morality. For example, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. As for the man who entered the city, they—far from inviting him into the house and giving him food and drink—attacked to rape him as well. In fact, those people Abraham had unknowingly invited were also angels. Abraham too surely realized later that they were angels, but it is certain that until they came to him and he invited them, he did not know such a thing. And the angels’ task was to bring out and rescue Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family from there, before burning and destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah, however, would show an entirely different reaction to those angels. They would want to rape them. They were surely not like Abraham. Even though the angels struck that city’s people who attacked the house with blindness, it says in the text, “yet still they did not leave off, until they wearied themselves seeking the door.” Genesis 19:11

Look at their diligence! Had I been inside that city, in the midst of that very perverse people, then at the latest when I went blind, I would at least have shown a reaction of bewilderment and fallen into worrying about my own plight. As with what they say, “there is death but no turning back,” for the sake of their perverse aims even blindness means nothing to them. And what they attacked and wanted to obtain were not beautiful, wonderful women, but hairy, bearded men. Men are attacking in order to have relations with men. So it seems people can go this far astray. But Lot was different. He brings his daughters outside and says: “Take my daughters who have not known a man; do to them what is good in your eyes, but do nothing to these men.” (Genesis chapter 19 in its entirety.) Who now would set about protecting a guest who came to his house in this way? No one? Then woe to us. So it means that a person saying, “he does it this way, that one does it that way, and we are influenced,” is an excuse. The valuable person can preserve his value everywhere. If we are not doing it, if no one is doing it, this saves neither us nor anyone. “Only the one who does what is right and just shall be saved”—God had these cities of Sodom and Gomorrah set down as an example for us human beings. (1 Corinthians 10:11) Furthermore, by offering his daughters to those people, the prophet Lot perhaps thought he might be able to restrain them. Lot, being one who lived among them, knew that they could not do such a thing to his own daughters. Because the daughters were already living in that city, and if they had had such an intention, that perverse people could have done it at any time. In short, Lot was not offering, “take my daughters, do what you want,” to every so-and-so who piped up at his door. In any case the men, understanding Lot’s purpose in this manner of warning, grow all the angrier at him. (Genesis 19:6-9)

So it means that, as many suppose, no one can claim about Abraham’s attitude and behavior, “everyone was like that back then anyway.” In those days, in some places, there was perhaps an even more terrible savagery and lawlessness than there is now. We read too that this was so. But it was not as widespread as in our present time. Now everything is global, that is, it happens on a worldwide scale.

Behind goodness an excuse is always sought. As I mentioned above, is a person smiling, hospitable, generous, gentle-natured? All right, for them there is surely a reason for this situation. Either he is this way for his own interest, or surely something will come out from under this business. They cannot comprehend this behavior of a person that stems from expecting nothing, from being this way simply because it is right, and from loving people. And if a person’s upbringing and culture are not really of the guest-loving sort, and if love is not within him either, he himself looks with a bad eye upon those who show this love and strives to belittle them. Like the bad conscience my smoking friends at school had during the times when I did not smoke. This too is a method people use, because they themselves do not do the good traits they see in those before them. If even one in forty of their own kind behaved well like this, then surely something negative also occurred. That is, that person’s good intention and love have been abused. That is why they belittle that feeling, saying, “love, what’s that supposed to be!” He himself does not feel it, and if he has always seen it thus in his surroundings, then by now this coldness is, for him, a rule, an unchanging law. And in his view no one has the thing called love. Unfortunately the general thinking is like this. There are also reasons that push those people to this thinking. There is no one whose head the humble people, inclined to goodness, are not walked all over. Such well-intentioned people are zero in their eyes anyway. Even though they hate the people who bluster and rant, they show more respect to them and take them as examples. Within themselves they think: “Never mind, let them hate me too, but let me also be held in regard.” People find it easier to get themselves accepted through the way of hatred rather than the way of love. They take such people as examples and emulate them. They force themselves to be like that too.

Just as I was checking these very lines, something happened to me. My seventy-four-year-old father was going to come to Germany, to me, as a guest. Does a person say to his father, “no, don’t come”? Could there be such rudeness? But for him to come, he needs to get a visa. We are on the phone, and my father said to me: “They say that if you make the request from there, it will be much easier and quicker.” “All right, father, I’ll do whatever is needed, whatever I can,” I said. We telephoned the relevant office. They told us what was required. I write it down exactly: A wage certificate showing the last three months. The lease of the home you live in, how many square meters it is, and so on. We took these with us and went. In our household my wife works, and only half-days. But our way of life and so on is comfortable, and we are well off. We live without asking for or taking anything from anyone. The official in charge looked at the wage certificates and said, “this won’t do.” He does calculations with the figures he writes one under another on the papers. And again, again, he goes and says, “it won’t do, your income is too little”! “So can we not invite a guest to our home?” we said. “In this situation you cannot,” he says. “And besides, our father is not in need of us. On the contrary, in terms of wealth he is far richer than we are,” we said. “That doesn’t matter,” the man says. I turned to my wife and said: “This is freedom for you—you can’t even invite a guest to your home.” The official hears it and has lowered his head to the papers, but it is clear he is angry at me too. “The laws are like this; there is nothing I can do,” he said. Every civil servant’s word of “no” comes out this way. And we are supposedly German citizens. My wife, moreover, was born and raised in Germany. When we went outside, I turned to my wife and said this: “Actually this law is applied only to visa countries, that is, to the peoples of poor countries. For instance, even if an American were living under a bridge, this law would not hold for him. Or an Englishman who has nothing would come swinging his arms freely, and no one would even find it in himself to have the right to ask him such absurd questions. ‘Do you have money in your pocket?’ Or ‘however much does the household you’re going to stay with earn?’ and the like.” The people of rich countries do not love guests anyway, and generally they are not hospitable either. Nor are there such restrictions for them. It is the poor, the wretched, who love the guest. It is the people of a poor nation who are hospitable. And they too come up against the legal prohibition that says, “if you don’t have enough money, you can’t bring a guest either”! Humanity already lives in a debased state—isn’t that enough, that they also support it with such despicable laws? Now if the questions he asked were of the sort, “Does your father have a criminal record or anything? Was he caught doing anything unlawful? Is he going to want any kind of help from us? Has he ever asked?”—that I would understand. That state which says “you don’t have enough money” takes tax from us every year, however little or much it may be; and it is again we who pay for health insurance, medicine, and whatever else there is. This is the state that says you don’t have enough money to invite a guest, but when it comes to tax says, “then your money is enough, you must pay.” As it happened, the party governing this state at the time was also “the Social Democratic Party!” When we went outside I again grumbled to myself to my wife: “We speak of Abraham’s hospitality, but if you don’t have money the German state says, “you can’t even be hospitable”.”

On the other side, terrorists, human butchers, swindlers, and forgers seek asylum in Germany—let us not even speak of those who stay ten to a room in one or two rooms. Aside from the money each of them hides under his pillow, Germany gives them aid money per head as well. Never mind; they still stay ten to those two rooms. We, thank God, work and have worked from the day we came, asking for nothing, without even being able to take the fruit of our own hands. And to us they say, “no, you can’t even invite a guest, you don’t earn enough.” Whereas I myself have seen many who live off Germany’s back. People over sixty years of age who have sought asylum and receive money every month without working or doing anything. This is the Germany that pensions off the people of an eastern state with millions of people—people who never worked, who were of not one penny’s benefit to that German treasury—and exchanges their worthless money one-to-one. Even they, when they came, first of all hated the Turks, saying: “Why didn’t they go back when we came, to open up jobs for us!”

In our world, whatever you take up, it is generally always upside down. Logic cannot grasp these situations. But we understand those people too. Because we too, from time to time, think this way, behave this way, talk this way, and we too, unfortunately, are no different from them. But it is obligatory for us to be different. If we want to find favor in God’s eyes, we cannot go along the road this world goes. If we do go, our being saved is very—indeed very—doubtful. The difference is right here: in knowing and understanding this knowledge, and in the person’s surely feeling the necessity of changing some things in himself. Some criticize the whole world and want to change it. Which is easier? Changing the whole world, or changing our own selves?