ADNAN OKTAR'S UNIVERSITY YEARS IN HIS OWN WORDS

Mr. Adnan Oktar is telling about his years in Mimar Sinan University: My family is a secular, classical family. They are from the middle class. A family in Ankara. I had my parents, my brother and grandparents. It was a secular family. Only my late grandfather used to pray. Sometimes my father used to go to mosque for Friday prayer. My mother was not fulfilling her regular prayers. Nor my brother. In my high school years, in the last year of high school, I started to fulfill my prayers after making research about God and grasping His existence. I purchased some books, various catechisms. At that time I purchased the catechism by Omar Nasuhi Bilmen. I purchased the books of Said Nursi and many similar books. Indeed there was the book of Huseyin Hilmi Işık. It was a book that consisted very detailed information. I bought the Ihya by Imam Gazali, the Letters by Imam Rabbani, and the books of Abu Laysi Samarkand. I also bought various other booklets of our times’ scholars. Reading them constantly I deepened my knowledge. Then I came to Fındıklı Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul. I passed the exams of this college in the third rank. Entering this school was something wanted, for it was entirely under the control of Marxists. I thought that I could communicate the message of Islam readily there. Indeed I embarked on my mission there very efficiently. In the corridors of the school, in the breaks and even during the classes I was carrying out my mission. Sometimes instructors used to come and disperse the people around me. Especially during the workshops they did not let. That is how I carried out my activities. Then there were some prominent instructors there. There were professors. I had pamphlets on the invalidity of the theory of evolution. I was distributing them and then asked them to have their opinion about them. I told them, “Sir, would you criticize this for me after reading it?” But my main goal was, of course, to make them read the book. Rather than criticism, I knew that I would accomplish my goal if I made them read the book. Indeed, this is how it happened. I had quite an influence at school. Then I had my transfer to the Istanbul University Philosophy Department. I again started my activities there. Then I started writing my books that you know right now and I still continue. 

(Al  Baghdadi, August 5th, 2008)