Harun Yahya

Under the pseudonym Harun Yahya , Oktar published over 300 books, mostly with creationist content

Harun Yahya (born February 2, 1956 in Ankara ), whose real name is Adnan Oktar , is a Turkish televangelist , publicist and one of the most famous creationists in the Islamic world. He became known as the presenter of a program on the satellite and streaming broadcaster A9 TV, where he always appeared surrounded by heavily made-up, lightly dressed and beauty-operated women whom he called his "kittens". He denied the Holocaust at least until October 2000 . Harun Yahya is the author of numerous creationist books, films, and websites.

Life and works

Oktar studied interior design , but did not finish his studies. He began his career preaching to young people from the upper class of Istanbul .

In 1988, Oktar drew the displeasure of Islamic conservative circles when he ordered his followers to take off their headscarves . He also reduced the number of compulsory daily prayers from five to two. Oktar first made a name for itself in the 1990s as the leader of a sect that was involved in several sex scandals.

In 1995 he established a foundation. In the following years he published books on creationism.

In 2008, Oktar was sentenced to three years in prison by a Turkish court for forming a criminal organization . This conviction was overturned by the next higher court in early 2010 due to serious procedural errors. The court found him to be mentally ill at the time and he then spent 10 months in a mental hospital. The case should be reopened.

He became known to a wider audience in 2011 after starting his satellite and streaming channel A9 TV . During his talk shows on his station, in which he preached on religious and political topics, he surrounded himself with heavily made-up, beauty-operated and sometimes very young women whom he calls "kedi" - the kittens.

In February 2018, a religious union charged him, among other things, with violating religious feelings. Criminal charges and rumors about drugs, allegations of prostitution and sex orgies had accompanied the work of the sect leader for a long time. The Turkish media regulator RTÜK then stopped the broadcast several times and imposed heavy fines because it violated gender equality and humiliated women. Previously, the new head of the State Authority for Religions in Turkey , Ali Erbaş , had publicly questioned both the spiritual mission and the mental state of Oktar.

On July 11, 2018, Oktar was arrested in Istanbul along with a few hundred supporters after he was put on the wanted list of the finance department. Among other things, he was charged with founding a criminal organization and "fraud through abuse of faith and religious feelings". The sect is also accused of child abuse, sexual assault, kidnapping, extortion and political and military espionage. A total of 235 arrest warrants were issued. The suspects were arrested in five Turkish provinces.

Oktar's reprimand was seen as part of the policy change in the post-Gulen era in Turkey. After the break with the once allied movement of the preacher Fethullah Gülen , which has now been declared a terrorist organization, the political leadership in Ankara realigned its dealings with the multitude of Islamist groups, sects and foundations in the country.

Creationism and Attitude to Darwinism

Harun Yahya worked for a time with the Christian Institute for Creation Research of Duane Gish , later more with the leader of the intelligent design movement Michael Behe . Both are leading exponents of creationism in the United States .

In 2008, he spoke about American intelligent design in an interview with Spiegel :

“I find this concept of intelligent design to be quite dishonest. One should really believe in the existence of Allah, one should stand up for religion, for Islam or Christianity. The concept of intelligent design claims that things were somehow created, but not by whom. One should clearly say: That was Allah. "

- Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya

The evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin holds Yahya for fraud. The Darwinism caused, according to Yahya, the two world wars and was also the cause of "racism, fascism and communism, and many other barbaric world views" have been. In his view, terrorism and with it the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were also caused by Darwinism.

Atlas of Creation

In his magnum opus "Atlas of Creation", a six kilogram book, Oktar tried to show that the animals and plants that live on earth today should not have changed for millions of years. This is to be proven with corresponding photos of fossils and the supposedly associated living animals or plants shown side by side. In many cases, however, it is easy to see that these are not the same creatures as claimed. For example, a is starfish with a brittle star equated, although there even are animals from different biological classes is, an alleged trout is actually a white fish and a mapped scallop is misdiagnosed as oyster called, neither the one nor the other are an ever fossils . Photos of fishing lures modeled after a spider and an insect were also used. One of these pictures even shows the fish hook.

In 2007, Yahya sent thousands of copies of his book to Western scientists, including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins from the University of Oxford and biologist Kevin Padian from the University of California . Both rejected the work as unscientific.

Attitude to Zionism and Judaism

Another topic on which Harun Yahya publishes is Zionism , which he considers racist and a consequence of Darwinism, referring to the French right-wing extremist and convicted Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy . Harun Yahya claims that Zionism seeks world domination and poses a threat to world peace.

In Yahya's mind , Jews forged the Torah . The Talmud advises an aggressive, selfish and racist "model" and commands that the gospels be burned if one can get hold of them. According to traditions that come from the Talmud, according to Yahya, believing Jews would have to spit on the earth three times if they saw a church or an image of Jesus. Yahya also speaks of a "degeneration" that can be seen in Judaism. Yahya postulates a secret collaboration between Jewish and Freemasonry. The Jews or Zionists and Freemasons are described on Yahya's website as follows:

“It was precisely during this time that Adnan Oktar's research on Judaism and Freemasonry was ready for publication. The reason why Adnan Oktar decided to research this topic was that the Koran describes the Jews as the greatest enemy against the believers. After his research, Adnan Oktar established the activities of the Zionists in our country and saw that these are carried out by his secret order, Freemasonry. There was a secret influence of Freemasonry on a very large number of citizens, academics, bureaucrats, politicians, and media corporations. Their main task was to gradually destroy the moral and religious values of our people; and, as stated in a verse of the modified Torah, to transform them into 'field animals'. With this in mind, materialistic logic, the theory of evolution, and the irreligious and immoral way of life were appropriated in various ways, especially for young people and all strata of society. The Freemasons played the leading role in this mass propaganda among the nationals, the press and the teaching posts. "

- Harun Yahya : The life story

“The Nazi-Zionist Alliance was formed with the intention of moving German Jews from Germany to Palestine, not to exterminate these people en masse. (...) The alleged 'Jewish genocide' in World War II is nothing more than an exaggeration of some war-related losses. In other words, a 'Jewish genocide' never took place. "

- Harun Yahya : "The Holocaust Lie"

His book Soykırım Yalanı: Siyonist-Nazi İşbirliğinin Gizli Tarihi. (Istanbul 2005, German: "The genocide lie. The secret history of the cooperation between Zionists and Nazis.") Is an example of his Holocaust denial . The temporary distribution of his works by Millî Görüş was included in a report for the protection of the constitution in 2003 . He has now distanced himself from the accusation of a Nazi-Zionist alliance that he propagated.

various

Harun Yahya believes that the Quran provides information about the future. The exploration of space, the development of aircraft, the use of wind power and other technical achievements such as image transmission, electricity, computer technology and robots are already described or suggested in the Koran. In his book "The Miracles of the Qur'an", Yahya describes dozens of phenomena that he claims to have recognized in the text of the Qur'an. It also follows the theory of the number 19 developed by Rashad Khalifa . Yahya sees a connection between the Koran, the number 19 and Pascal's triangle .

The connection between the number 19 and the Pascal triangle according to the order in which the verses of the Quran were sent down. The 96th sura that was revealed first is the 19th sura from the back. It consists of 19 verses and there are a total of 285 (19 x 15) letters. There are 76 (19 x 4) words in the first 5 verses. The first revealed verses of the 68th sura, which was revealed second, consist of 38 (19 x 2) words. The 73rd sura, which is the third revelation, consists of 57 (19 x3) words.

Harun Yahya occasionally makes hints in interviews that the expected eschatological Mahdi resembles him. The descriptions in the sources apply to him: the eyebrows, the broad forehead, the hair color, beard, the radiant face, straight teeth, birthmark, furrow, height, broad shoulders, etc. Also the descent from the prophet applies to him. The name of the expected Messiah could be Adnan. He also describes the year he was born in 1956 as an important year for the end times. Furthermore, the Mahdi will appear in Istanbul and level Darwinism to the ground. However, he would never claim to be the expected Mahdi.

Modern media

At the end of the 1990s he discovered the Internet as a suitable medium for disseminating his ideas, which made him known primarily in the Muslim diaspora of Europe and North America. Oktar's films, if at all, are mostly broadcast on television stations with a religious conservative focus . All of his films are available free of charge on the Internet. The films cover the same spectrum of content as his books. They are accompanied by music and produced with some technical effort, but often contain unmarked material from the BBC and the Discovery Channel .

Oktar has repeatedly banned websites in Turkey that, in his opinion, defamed him. It is known that a court forbade access to 63 pages in Turkey. Prominent victims were the homepages of Richard Dawkins (the evolutionary biologist and Oxford professor had to wait two years for a court in Istanbul to unblock his website RichardDawkins.net), Turan Dursun , websites such as www.ateizm.org, www.egitimsen .org.tr (Turkish Trade Union for Education) as well as the Vatan newspaper .

literature

Martin Riexinger: The Islamic Creationism of Harun Yahya. In: ISIM Newsletter. 11 (Dec. 2002), p. 5 ( PDF )
Martin Riexinger: Propagating Islamic Creationism on the Internet. In: Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology 2.2 (1998) ( PDF ( Memento from June 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ))

documentary

Inside The Weird World of an Islamic 'Feminist' Cult , Broadly VICE with moderator Meher Ahmad, November 20, 2015

Web links

Commons : Harun Yahya - Collection of Images

Literature by and about Harun Yahya in the catalog of the German National Library
Harun Yahya's website (multilingual)
A9 TV
Jens Lubbadeh: Islamic Creationism: With Allah against Darwin , stern.de , March 29, 2007.
Richard Herzinger : Radical message, gentle in tone , Zeit online , May 6, 2004
Omar Rehan: Refutation of Harun Yahya's “The real ideological root of terrorism is Darwinism and Materialism” , Media Monitors Network, November 12, 2001
Cord Riechelmann: Images and sounds of nature , the daily newspaper , July 11, 2007

Individual evidence

↑ kacyasinda.info

↑ Parallel to the reluctance of the “Milli Gazete” with regard to Harun Yahya, the author himself has also become more cautious. The work he wrote, “The Holocaust Lie” (“Soykirim Yalani”) is no longer available. In the meantime, the author has erased clearly anti-Semitic content in other texts on this topic that were published in German. (…) In July 2003, Yahya's production adjusted to the fact that denying the Holocaust as anti-Semitism is politically burdensome. However, this does not mean that Yahya has revised his anti-Semitic attitudes, it is just a tactical precautionary measure. Quote from the article Because what cannot be cannot be by Marcus Hammerschmitt from January 1, 2008

↑ ^a ^{b Report on the} Protection of the Constitution Baden-Württemberg 2003. ((PDF)) (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved July 5, 2010 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2

↑ Islamic creationism: With Allah against Darwin - knowledge. Stern.De, archived from the original on November 17, 2011 ; Retrieved July 5, 2010 .

^ Creation story: With the Koran against the theory of evolution. Welt.de, June 20, 2007, accessed July 5, 2010 .

↑ Ruşen Çakır: Ayet ve slogan. Türkiye'deki İslami Oluşumlar. Istanbul 1990, p. 243.

↑ Sex, flies and videotape: the secret lives of Harun Yahya , New Humanist, September 9th 2009

↑ Orgies, Blackmail and anti-Semitism: Inside the Islamic Cult Whose Leader Is Embraced by Israeli Figures , Haaretz, July 11, 2018

↑ ntvmsnbc.com

↑ https://www.dailysabah.com/deutsch/istanbul/2018/07/11/sektenfuehrer-adnan-oktar-in-istanbul-festhaben-1531299483

↑ Adnan Hoca davası sil baştan. Cnnturk.com, accessed July 5, 2010 .

↑ http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/photo-adnan-oktars-kitties-have-respectable-university-degrees-134450#photo-10

↑ https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000073969482/ankara-schphia-neue-ordnung-in-der-sektenwelt

↑ Report on the ORF website

^ Report on the Daily Sabah website

↑ https://www.nzz.ch/international/ankara-endung-die-sektenwelt-neu-ld.1355637

↑ https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000073969482/ankara-schphia-neue-ordnung-in-der-sektenwelt

↑ Daniel Steinvorth: "All terrorists are Darwinists". In: Spiegel Online . September 22, 2008, accessed January 17, 2010 (interview).

^ "The evolutionary swindle" ( Memento from March 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

↑ Cf. "Der Evolutionsschwindel" The Foreword ( Memento from May 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

^ Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya, "Forbidden Music. Forbiddenmusic.wordpress.com, accessed July 5, 2010 .

^ Lecture by Richard Dawkins

↑ [http://blog.thebrights.de/2007/12/07/die-bildgewaltigen-irrtumer-der-kreationisten/ trainee / dead link | date = 2018-04 | archivebot = 2018-04-14 02:44: 31 InternetArchiveBot | url = http: //blog.thebrights.de/2007/12/07/die-bildgewaltigen-irrtumer-der-kreationisten/}}] (link not available)

↑ * Evil under the Sun *: Creationists at University College London. Evilunderthesun.blogspot.com, February 28, 2008, accessed July 5, 2010 .

↑ Andrew Higgins: The Wall Street Journal, "An Islamic Creationist Stirs a New Kind of Darwinian Struggle," March 17, 2009 . In: The Wall Street Journal . March 17, 2009. Retrieved April 10, 2012.

↑ Riazat Butt: Muslim creationist Adnan Oktar challenges scientists to prove evolution . In: The Guardian . December 22, 2008. Retrieved April 10, 2012.

↑ Toby Green: Creationist offers prize for fossil proof of evolution . In: The Independent , September 29, 2008. Retrieved May 17, 2007.

^ Islamic Creationist and a Book Sent Round the World . In: The New York Times , July 17, 2007.

↑ Harun Yahya: The horror of the Holocaust How did the National Socialists murder millions of Jews, Gypsies and the disabled? What secret agreement was there between the National Socialists and radical Zionism?