The Quran and the Bible

When I compared the Bible with the Quran, it became — again, in my own view — even more impossible for me to believe that the Quran could be anything other than from God. The more I read and the more I researched, the more I believed in the Quran. And most of all when I talked with those who argue that the Quran cannot be the word of God, because of the reasons they put forward. Perhaps without knowing it, without being aware of it, they were disparaging the very Bible they said they believed in. Because whenever they said, according to their own reasoning, “this cannot be, God would not want such a thing, no, God has never done anything like this,” I would find the same or a similar event in the Bible. Or when they spoke of historical events, saying things like “this event does not appear in the Bible, this was written wrong, this never happened,” then when I researched it, I would find clues to that event in the Bible, and it was very logical for those clues to lead to that event. Besides these, the truths of the Quran, which shed great light on an event that is nowhere written in the Bible, also caught my attention. I will explain these by giving examples so that what I write may be more easily understood.

When Christians take up the Quran, for some reason they want to see a Bible identical to it, down to the same dot and comma. And when Muslims take up the Bible, they want to see a Quran with the same mindset. Rather than the events and meanings within those books, they sometimes really do look for even the very same words. Their way of comparing the Bible with the Quran rests on a logic of criticism like, “if that word was used in one place, why wasn’t it used here too?” It is as if they are searching for counterfeit money, but in a literal sense. Research is good and also necessary. Indeed, the more meticulously this work is done, the more valuable it becomes. I am not against this at all. On the contrary, throughout this entire book I will in fact be defending these ideas. Coming back once more to the counterfeit-money method: with this, people research those books with such a logic, or they oppose them, or they choose not to believe and to throw those books away. Because between counterfeit money and genuine money, not a single dot, a single letter, a single line, a single color — however small — should differ. This matter of money has hundreds more features that could be listed. From the thickness of the paper, to the thread inside it, to its watermark, to the lines that shine under special light, and so on — all of them too must match. With this logic neither the Bible and the Quran nor the books of other prophets can be compared. Indeed, if we try to compare even the same books in the same language, but in different translations, then we return once more to the very matter that the Muslims and the medieval church shouted at the top of their lungs. And that is: “These books cannot be translated and would be faulty.” Are the Turkish translations of the Quran made by two different translators identical down to the dot and comma? Or are two Bible translations rendered into the same language identical down to the dot and comma? If we use this literal counterfeit-money method in this business of comparison, then the end of this business goes to saying, “in that case they are all counterfeit.” In this matter of translation, those who oppose reading those books in one’s own language have the very same logic. They are scared to death even of a dot-and-comma error. And this is not because they value God’s word, because they are meticulous; it is because they themselves cannot understand what is written in those books and do not want to understand it either. But neither do they want anyone to be ahead of them. And those who know yet oppose it are against the truths therein being learned. This, frankly, is a fear they feel that the ordinary common people — who are made to think that reading these writings is all but impossible — will read them, learn them, and then throw those bloodsuckers off their backs along with their burdens. And they do this, supposedly, with good intentions, on the pretext that they want to protect those people. With a logic like, “Should God’s word be given to these ignorant people? What would become of us then? Can those brainless ones understand it?” they place themselves in the position of protectors too. In reality, once those people they call brainless learn, they will break their chains. It could well be that through this path those people will throw off the bondage they have been made to carry, tied to their backs for thousands of years, and strip themselves of their burdens. And indeed, as knowledge increased, that is just what happened. As soon as this Bible began to be translated, the stirrings and the revolts began. That the religionists knew what kind of fate awaited them once these books passed into everyone’s hands was no miracle. In their own words, “no matter which goose-brain reads these books,” they would from then on find it hard to say “amen” to their every word. In short, by trying to keep people away from these books, they aimed solely to protect their own interests and advantages, and they still work with great effort to keep it that way.

The Bible that Martin Luther first translated into German in Germany in the year 1534 was published. In England there are also people who did this work earlier by translating it into English. Upon such people the church declared war. It burned these people alive in the public squares. But however much oppression they applied, they were never able to block this work according to their own wishes. The same matter was experienced in the history of the Muslims too, and is still being experienced. Moreover, in those times book printing and the printing press either did not exist or were very new. And that too was under the church’s oppression. When the first printing press was invented, the church surely raised an outcry to the heavens. Later they softened, and only saluted this invention if books suited to their own purposes were printed. Otherwise, according to them, this invention is the work of Satan! Again the same stories and the same events. And opposing every innovation by calling it the work of Satan is no stranger to Islam either. The Islamic world merely follows behind them in point of time. Presumably because our heads are a little finer, we insist on being late to learn the lessons from these events lived out in the past!

In 1789 the French Revolution happens, and this mindset spreads to the whole world. With this it is above all the Catholic church that is dealt a blow. These form the beginning of the chain of events that lead to those religionists’ claws being broken and to their destruction. And all of this always stems from knowledge. The more knowledge you have, the easier it becomes for you to escape from being a donkey and to become a human being. That is, you strip off the burdens on your back. And because the religionists knew this, in those times they wanted neither to hear nor to make heard even the letter “K” of knowledge. Everything called knowledge was hateful to them. From the roundness of the world to gravity, even this knowledge disturbed them. They cut, they hanged, they burned. Just like today’s Jehovah’s Witnesses. They stuck their noses into every part of those people’s lives. With these I have not been speaking of the Muslims; I am still on the Christians! Because the Christian world portrays Islam, and therefore the Ottoman Empire, as barbarian. In their own history books they teach them as enemies of civilization. In every form of governance and administration in the world this is often true, too. Still, one wants to shout at them from within with the words of Jesus: “Man, why do you not see the beam in your own eye, yet you see the speck in another’s eye?”

Be that as it may, this enmity is the same in every nation and every country that harbors it. Even two neighbors, while living in houses side by side, are always tearing each other down behind closed doors. Going further and taking each other to court is, in this most advanced-civilization Europe, an everyday commonplace event. There are apparently tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of such cases. These are such trivial events. Either a branch of the tree in one man’s garden has drooped into the other man’s garden, or the one’s dog has peed in the other’s garden! Or in the park his car’s rear tire, though it does not bother anyone at all, is sitting on the other’s plot of land! There are more comical and abnormal cases too; writing them out seems shameful and needless to me. If people have become blood enemies over such reasons, how would these people not be enemies to the Ottoman? And on top of that, to destroy this Ottoman, those religionists organized crusades. I am still astonished. So many nations, all of Europe, come together and attack the Ottoman. Each of these rabble hordes was promised paradise by the church of that time. Now they mock because Saddam declared jihad. Well, and what are those who pass for Christians still doing? Saddam said, let me declare jihad and resort to these stale, worn-out tricks, but it doesn’t work. In reality the enemy is strong; otherwise it would work!

What is the difference between these societies, these nations, these people? Please, you decide and you tell me. How each of them puffs itself up to the other, saying: “I am far superior to you”! That supposedly humanity-loving Europe — and America has by now hoisted the flag of disgrace outright — while these people are screaming about human rights, freedom, and democracy, in every war waged against Muslims all those nations feel, deep down, a satisfaction. For every Muslim who dies, they practically savor a taste of profit. I have seen these feelings even among Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are supposedly the most international of Christian religions. These are people who go door to door proclaiming God’s Kingdom to humanity with no distinction of race, language, or nation. “Come to us, you will be saved” — they supposedly carry the message of salvation! If such racial enmities and lookings-down-upon exist even within them… Well, where does this enmity come from?

— Wherever it comes to the Muslims from, it must be coming to them from the same source. What is this source, or who is it? The heroine of Aziz Nesin’s novel Sweet Betüş asks the same question. “Ah! If only I could find the source of this filth,” she was saying. The apostle James, with the spirit he received from God, explains the source of this hatred and rancor in people like this:

Who is wise (possessed of wisdom) and understanding among you? Let him by his fine conduct, with the mildness that belongs to wisdom, show his good deeds.

But if you have bitter jealousy and contentiousness in your hearts, do not be boasting and lying against the truth.

This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, from the self, demonic.

For where jealousy and contentiousness are, there disorder and every vile thing are.

But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, and reasonable. It is full of mercy and good fruits. It has no partiality and no hypocrisy. James 3:13-17 (New Translation)

In truth, does not even this verse alone explain the source of the filth? In the very next chapter after it — that is, the 4th chapter or bab — the apostle James speaks of far more interesting truths. Please open the Bible yourselves and read it in its place.

That the times and the age have changed, these religionists too have of course noticed. They lost so many of their members. Now they have taken books into their hands and go door to door like that. But do not be deceived; this is only the outward appearance. The practice, however, is just like the mentality held in the Middle Ages. They only changed tactics. Under another name, another label, even sometimes under a separate roof, they still sing the same song. “Whatever we say is the truth; no one but us can understand these books. Whatever I say, you walk that path to the millimeter, to the letter. Even if you read these books, you will only understand if you are together with us; but if you stubbornly go your own way and, saying ‘I’ll understand it come what may,’ you read them, you’ll bang your head somewhere” — this is the song. And it is they themselves who first bang that head. Always the same basin, the same bathhouse. Your concern was knowledge? Here’s knowledge for you, they come saying. In our day the profession of word-juggling is called being a lawyer, or a politician. Yet even gas-pump attendants know this trade now. Will the religionists go trailing after all of these?!

I remember when I was a child, sincerely saying “I believe in God,” or praying, was as if it were something to be ashamed of. Was this so only in our own circle? Every place is surely different. We too were not atheists who did not believe in God. We believed in our own way, like the so-called enlightened, progressive class. For this reason, worship, religion, and so on were not looked upon with any sympathy at all in our family circle. Rather, we were among those whose religion was only what was written on that identity card. In the ’70s and ’80s there were certain things that were most looked upon with sympathy, or practiced, among the Muslims in Europe. The most famous were not eating pork, and also the headscarf, which rests on the jealousy of the men. And he wants to attribute this business to God too, of necessity, so as not to be embarrassed. As I said, it is a practice that rests solely on jealousy. Otherwise it is not, as I also said in earlier topics, because he loves God, out of a desire to carry out His commands without fault, because he is an honorable, upright, trustworthy-in-word, honest person. If they were someone who did all these and also placed importance on faithfulness between spouses, then all right, let it pass. They would be dying at the first opportunity to get into bed with another’s wife or daughter, yet they would make their own wives wear the headscarf. And the sin of pork is even more interesting.

Let us perceive these events not just as Witnesses and Muslims, but as the concepts of sin-committing implanted in people’s subconscious. When we came to Germany, the most striking matter we saw among Muslims as a religious duty and obligation was, as I said, the pork question. At one point wine, as liquor, seemed to be an issue too, but they tried to save their Islam by clinging to Rakı instead of wine! The men who did this, while lying as much as they drew breath — untrustworthy, swindling, quarrelsome, gambling, drinking, not properly looking after their homes, living a foul-smelling life — would say, “But we don’t eat pork.” They would even hesitate to buy beef or veal from a German butcher; indeed, most of them would not buy it. Because according to them, even if that machine or knife had been washed, pork had touched it, meaning it was unclean. In those days there were no Turkish shops, butchers, or food products belonging to them, nothing. This abundance of food and vegetables came to Germany from the cultures of foreign countries. If we say that in the beginning there was nothing at all in the way of food and vegetables suited to the Turks’ palate, we would not be lying. Indeed, the Turks bought live sheep and slaughtered those sheep secretly in basements. So that the blood would be drained, so that no pork-handling hand would touch it, so that the thing they would eat would not be unclean! The Germans who saw this were astonished and raised an outcry to the heavens in fury. Truly, our Turks held the matter of not eating pork above every other matter. Each of those first arrivals kept falling in and out of brothels. Taking German and Yugoslav women as mistresses, having illegitimate children by them, they neglected their wives and children back in Turkey. Both the women and the men who came to Germany were forced into these situations. The German state, rather than husband and wife, brought these families over one by one, separating and tearing them apart from each other, to work in its own country. It was that policy of the state that drove these men into such a foul life. In the beginning, for some reason, whatever they thought, they did not want to take them in as families together. The biggest reason was those people putting down roots in their country. Once they saw that they were getting these people to do the filthiest jobs, well, even that fear no longer remained. Because who does not love the luxury of employing a maidservant and a manservant?

The Turks signed up together, husband and wife, at the labor-recruitment agencies to come to Germany. They had children and so on too. Whichever one’s turn came up first was taken. The other had to wait. Sometimes a year, sometimes two years, sometimes an entirely indefinite time they would wait. But if the wife or the husband could fulfill the heavy conditions the German set, then by filing a request they could bring over the families left behind. Those who could not fulfill these hard conditions kept falling in and out with whomever they found here and there. They had children by them. And the laws forced those people to pay compensation to those with whom they had had a child and with whom they had never been a family. As for the women who had been forced to leave their husbands and come to Germany alone, they too kept falling in and out with other men. Again, the husbands who had left their wives and come alone kept mistresses in Germany for years without so much as throwing a letter to their homes, leaving those women in destitution and neediness with a swarm of children in Turkey. German justice did not want to know about these men’s children and wives in their homeland. Years later, when I was about to become a German citizen, when they wanted to know whether or not I had a child from the wife I had separated from fifteen years earlier, and told me that if I did not bring this document I would not be granted German citizenship, whether I liked it or not these events came to my mind. So then, upon entering German citizenship, it investigates all the way back to whether or not you have a child from the wife you separated from fifteen years ago before the laws of that country! That is, supposedly it is telling you, “don’t flee your obligation”! But if you don’t want to become a German citizen, you can flee it! All these practices are so comical, unjust, inhuman, and absurd.

Why were those people forced to live through such ugly, immoral events? They say “an example does no wrong,” so let us give an example. Suppose you are going to imprison people in destitution. Without giving anything, not even food. And before their eyes there will be loaves of bread, but whoever steals will be punished, killed. You will watch to see which one does not steal, is honorable, or who will steal, is dishonorable. The one who does not steal and dies of hunger is honorable; and the ones who steal, you will say, kill them! In both cases the result is death. According to them, one dies as honorable and the other as a thief. And this is a logic, indeed. This is the logic of illogic. The Germans first applied this logic to the Turkish workers they brought over. Yet in Germany, go somewhere without locking your car, and let a policeman see this, and it is no great matter for you to be fined. And they explain the reason with pride. “By leaving your car door open you have incited the person to theft,” they say, and they explain: “If your car had been locked, that person would not have dared to commit this theft; he would have passed on by.” That is, they defend the logic that a normal person, one who has nothing whatever to do with theft, an ordinary person, when an easily accessible opportunity comes before him, can steal too. Very true, isn’t it? Well, where was this state’s knowledge, laws, and logic when it was bringing the Turks over to work?! They did not give them even the value they gave to a thief in their own country, or to a person who might become a thief. From these lived experiences I want to explain this: God will also judge people, while they are under the same conditions, according to the values they themselves did not practice but expected from others. A person may be very simple and full of faults. Normally, when we set out to pass judgment on this person, he is asked, “why did you not do the expected values?” That person has not thought of these values, or has never been trained to do them. The education and level he received may even be very low. Let us say that, without any of these being taken into account, that person is still punished, oppressed, pushed outside society, and so on. If this is justice, then this too must not be forgotten: will not those same values be expected from that one who judges, who strives to punish, who pushes outside society? If a person cares nothing at all for these values, will he not, because of the reaction of the one facing him, say, “brother, why do you expect from others the things you yourself do not do”? For this reason Jesus says:

“Stop judging that you may not be judged; for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you measure out, it will be measured to you.” in Matthew 7:1-2.

Yes, while those people, even if by force of conditions, were doing all sorts of things far from God, they did not eat pork. Actually, I have come across Turks who, when very hard-pressed and because their heart craved it, ate the pork sausage made on the grill in those places of amusement. When these men did every kind of crookedness, their consciences were numb, but when they ate pork, their consciences troubled them for days, for months, perhaps for a whole lifetime! This situation resembles the rule of the sabbath* day upon which the Jews placed such importance in order to kill Jesus. Like their hating Jesus over why he was healing people with withered hands, hunchbacks, the paralyzed, the blind, the crippled on the sabbath day. The Witnesses too do every ugly thing, secret and open, but they do not take blood. The Jew kills Jesus because he did not keep the sabbath day. The Muslim does not eat pork but does every crookedness. The Jehovah’s Witness dies rather than take blood, and declares the one who takes it a son of death, but he has spent his whole life with his eye always on seeking three-penny advantages, unable to see the difference between black and white! These are one or two examples out of a million of the religious educations we take from the world. (*The Sabbath or Sabath day: working six days and resting, not working, on the seventh day. One of the ten commandments God gave to Moses.)

In time, if by then the family had not yet been broken apart, the Turkish workers brought over their wives and husbands. Each of them put on a headscarf. Even the one who didn’t put it on put it on. Yet whatever those men did while they were here, during that stretch of time who knows what their wives did over there, were forced to do. Or whatever the wives of those who came here first did, who knows what their husbands did over there. Was there no gossip, quarreling, enmity, lying, adultery, dishonor among those headscarf-wearers? In my opinion it was no less than among the others. Perhaps it is even uglier because it was done in secret, but who can say it was less than the others? The other at least presents himself as he is — whatever he is, so he is. But the one who says “I believe,” and moreover in the name of God, does this business under cover as well. And the stain comes not only to that person but, as I said in earlier topics, to God as well, which is terrifying. I am not saying those people should “bare their behinds,” but whatever those people do, whatever they draw attention to themselves with, that too will take a stain. Since they do these behaviors in the name of God, they draw the attention to the God they say they believe in. Whether he does this with the headscarf, or does it by sticking the Turkish flag on his car. The headscarf will draw attention to his faith, and the flag to his nationality. To whatever it is he draws attention, by their deeds they will bring either a stain or honor. Even if a thousand good things are done, this rule does not change: all the attention is always drawn onto the few bad things done. Unfortunately, we too had thousands of crooked deeds and only a few righteous ones. But as Muslims we did not eat pork! As Jehovah’s Witnesses we did not take blood! As Jews we did not break the Sabbath. And despite all our wars, cruelty, and hatreds toward people, as Christians we did not miss a single Christmas. Bravo to this faith of ours and to the works bound up with it. Who knows how much God appreciates us for these efforts of ours!

We said the Witnesses go door to door with the Bible in their hands. Does not a person, through that Witness’s behavior and the things he does, feel either sympathy or coldness toward that book? Is Islam not the same? Just imagine, if every person who says “I am a Muslim” had an upright, trustworthy-in-word, honest, spotless appearance, an odorless life, a knowledgeable faith, a peaceable nature. And if in general the majority of Muslims were like this, what kind of effect would this leave upon the whole world? Whereas if those who say “I am a Muslim” are in a state completely contrary to the virtues I listed — mired in filth, quarrelsome, ignorant, self-interested, devoid of love and mercy, coarse, thieving, not knowing what a rule of decency is — what kind of effect do they leave? I don’t think I need to give any answer. Is Islam only a matter of covering the head and not eating pork? In fact, because of the deeds they do, those people will continue to remain infidels in others’ eyes, and the others too infidels in theirs. How many upright and clean people there are who eat pork; how many bareheaded women faithful and honest to God there are. On the contrary, are there not so many swindling, cruel, and dishonorable people, both men and women, who do not eat pork and are covered? Are these not truths that contain the facts?

Some supporters of organizations who know that this is so — for example, again the Witnesses — hound their own members lest a stain come to themselves. Worldwide they pay great attention to their outward appearance and to the image they will leave. So that no stain may come upon their name. And this time they issue such needless rules and take such stances that this too destroys many an upright man. Those who are crooked immediately adapt to that strict environment and again do their juggling act. But the upright man is crushed. These situations will remain this way until the end of the world, that is, until the end of this system. In God’s books it says again and again: “Human power and justice will not be able to change these things.” (James 1:20)

My talking and arguing about the Quran with every Witness who came before me did not, as I said, lead me to the conclusion that “the Quran cannot be the word of God.” I asked them: “Isn’t there some publication your governing body has written on this subject, rather than your own thoughts?” Because whenever they found a small opening they would, without any hesitation, subject a person to a bombardment of words; but when they were cornered, in a situation where they could not give an answer, they would say: “We do what the governing body, the faithful and discreet slave, says”! Since they were personality-less robots, I too wanted to know what their faithful and discreet masters said on this subject. Bernd researched and found it, and there it was. In these magazines, whose Turkish name is now the Watchtower, a series about the Quran had been published in German, in magazines called Wachtturm, on 15 September 1965. Because various voices about the Quran were coming from every head. And what absurd and meaningless voices too. I am not writing them in this book, because in my view they were very meaningless and ignorant. But I will try to write the ones among them that seem logical. Even so, there is no way for me to write all of them; I will only try to treat a portion of the places that come to my mind and that I consider important.

They brought me this series of articles and I read it. The subject ran in these magazines, which come out every fifteen days, from 15 September to 1 November. Apart from these articles, I have not directly read anything negative written about the Quran in any of the Witnesses’ publications, nor have I heard that they published such. On the contrary, in their Turkish publications, in order to draw Muslims in, they use quoted verses from the Quran. To encourage reading, researching, and believing the Bible, the verses of the Quran appear frequently. They do not believe in the Quran, yet they say, “but look, it is written like this in your book too.” In my view this is not wrong. As long as the truths are spoken, one must not regard people resorting to such methods as swindling. On the one hand, while the Quran is shown as a good encouragement source in publications put out only for the Muslim segment, the real truth was that they were trying to hide their aversion to this book. In my view this is precisely what is not right. Instead, if they were to say openly: “Friend, I do not believe in this book and it cannot be from God, but while in the very book you say you believe in you are commanded to believe in our books, what is this that you are doing?” — I would say, “come, let me kiss your forehead.” Supposedly, while growing the flower, they were afraid that by pulling it from the root, in order for it to grow, it would break off! They first approach people with such polite words, then they drive a stake into the root of that flower they spoke of.

Anyway, let us come to the subjects that appear in these magazines. Later on I would even go all the way to New York over these subjects. The Turkish of these series never came out. I will read from the German and again set down below the most important subjects. It is not that long anyway, roughly a 15-page thing. And do not perceive these ideas as belonging only to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. These criticisms are ideas that the whole Christian world, and indeed even the Muslims, easily believe. A person who says “I am a Muslim” has taken this Muslim label from birth, but his mind and heart are very far from genuine Islam. The same holds for people born under the name of Christian, Jew, and other religions. Generally everyone’s religious identity stays as it was received from birth. Very few people set out to make a change. And whether that is a correct change is another question. Below I will try to treat the subject of the Quran, of its unbelievability, taking it from the Witnesses’ publications of those dates that I have in hand, writing the subjects under headings.