A prominent member of Turkey’s highest Islamic institution, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), stated that children who read the Turkish translation of the Koran “start gravitating towards” atheism and deism, a belief in a non-interventionist creator.
The statement was made by Professor Cağfer Karadaş during an interview with the pro-government newspaper Yeni Şafak on June 5.
“The main arguments of atheists and deists are not philosophical today but are based on translations of the Koran,” Karadaş claimed. “The translations do not present [information on] the context. I think that a common work by the Diyanet and theology departments on this subject would be very appropriate and reverse the wind.
“Religious culture teachers ask the Diyanet for free translations of the Koran and distribute them to students,” continued Karadaş. “When the students start reading [the Koran] and have trouble making sense out of it, they get confused and they can turn to these trends [atheism or deism]. I think that this is our most fundamental problem right now.”
Many others have also publicly addressed this same issue.
In a radio interview in July 2019, Temel Karamollaoğlu — the head of Turkey’s Islamist opposition party, Felicity — accused President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of driving young people away from Islam and towards deism. He said this was particularly true for youth from religious families.
In April 2018, participants gathered for a “Youth and Faith” workshop organized by the Konya Provincial Directorate of Education in the presence of 50 Islamic Imam Hatip school teachers. The workshop reportedly concluded that many students in those schools are leaning towards deism due to religious instruction inconsistencies.
Following the workshop, Erdoğan reportedly reprimanded Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz during an AKP assembly on the spread of deism at state schools. In response, Yilmaz denigrated the workshop and denied that deism was on the rise.
The head of the Diyanet, Ali Erbaş, also rejected the allegations. “None of the members of our nation would ever give credence to such a perverted, superstitious mentality,” he said. “Let no one slander our nation and our youths.”
In fact, Islam is the newest religion in Turkey, historically referred to as Asia Minor. Most inhabitants of that land were Christians: Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians. The land was ruled by the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire and had sizable Jewish communities. But the country underwent a process of Islamization following the Turkish invasion in the 11th century.
Today, only 0.1 percent of Turkey’s population is either Christian or Jewish. This is not only the result of massacres, pogroms and genocide. Turks’ systematic religious persecution has resulted in the conversions of many Christians into Islam throughout centuries.
Historian Dr. Vasileios Meichanetsidis shed some light on this issue in his article entitled Turkey’s No Longer Best-Kept Secret: Islamized Christians. “Many Turkish citizens are descendants of forcibly Islamized Christians,” he wrote.
“The local Muslim derebeys (valley lords) and the Ottoman state and army, via periodic acts of violence, special taxation (jizya), social segregation, systematic mistreatment and humiliation inexorably pushed the Christian population to Islamization for the sake of survival.”
He continued: “The Ottoman Empire lasted for some 600 years — from 1299 to 1923 — and included parts of Asia, Europe and Africa. During this period, the Turks engaged in practices such as: the ghulam system, in which non-Muslims were enslaved, converted and trained to become warriors and statesmen; the devshirme system, the forced recruitment of Christian boys taken from their families, converted to Islam and enslaved for service to the sultan in his palace and to join his janissaries (‘new corps’); compulsory and voluntary Islamization — the latter resulting from social, religious and economic pressure; and the sexual slavery of women and young boys, deportation and massacre.”
During the 1914-23 Christian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, innumerable Christian women and young girls were abducted and forcibly Islamized. This had impact upon the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christian communities.
Turkish author Ahmet Altan also discussed the issue of Turks having Christian ancestors in an op-ed in 2012. He wrote:
“Do you know that the grandfathers of almost all of our caliphs and sultans that we call ‘our ancestors’ were Christian and some were priests, don’t you?
“The Ottoman Empire was established in 1299. The Turks came to Anatolia in 1071. How many Turks came to Anatolia with [commander] Alp-Arslan? Let’s skip the question ‘who are the Turks’ and ask another question: Are the 70 million people who we call Turks today full-blooded children of ‘Turks’ who came here with Alp-Arslan? Or are we the common children of Turks who arrived [in Anatolia] as well as of Byzantines, Armenians, Anatolian Greeks, Kurds who lived in Anatolia at the time?” he asked.
“Then how come our ancestors only consist of Turks and Muslims? Are Byzantines not among our ancestors as well? And how come saying ‘prostitute Byzantine’ is not considered an insult to our ancestors? Because we fabricate history. We write a Turkish and Muslim history for us. We ignore all the peoples of Anatolia and the huge Byzantine – as if life had started with the army of Alp-Arsan in Anatolia.”
In 2016, Altan was arrested for sending “subliminal messages” that allegedly encouraged the Turkish coup attempt planners, and remains in jail.
Ironically, in a country where critical thinking “unofficially” constitutes a crime, many Turkish children and youths learn the truths about Islam from its very scripture: the Koran. It is not shocking that many decide to alienate themselves from this religion. “The Quran contains at least 109 verses that speak of war with nonbelievers, usually on the basis of their status as non-Muslims,” reports the website The Religion of Peace.
Apparently, verses such as “Seize them [nonbelievers] and slay them wherever you find them” (Quran 4:89) do not appeal to souls that seek a peaceful, loving relationship with their creator.
However, it is not easy for Muslim Turks to learn about and reconnect with the faith of their ancestors. After all, the country’s entire Christian community remains under severe pressure.
Since Turkey transitioned to the multi-party system in 1950, the country has maintained a failed story of “democratization.” That same year, Turkey joined the Council of Europe. Two years later, the country joined NATO. Moreover, Turkey’s negotiations for full European Union membership were started in 2005. The result: An Islamist AKP government led by Erdogan.
The West’s several efforts for helping “democratize” Turkey appear to have failed. Perhaps the true path to liberation and democratization lies with Turks returning to their Christian or Jewish roots.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara.
Buraq says
“When the students start reading [the Koran] and have trouble making sense out of it, ……….
Surprise, surprise! I have said, and will say it again, Islam is on its way out. The Internet is killing it. Kids nowadays are simply not going to accept a belief system that flies in the face of everything they experience in the world. Kids can’t watch evidence of modern technology and Science on YouTube and then believe that their prophet flew on the back of a winged horse and cut the moon in two.
It’s ‘game over’ for Islam.
Savvy Kafir says
I wish that were true, Buraq. But many young, Internet-savvy Muslims are very devout — including quite a few jihadis in both the Muslim world and the West. Years ago I hoped the Internet would cause Muslims to apostatize in numbers large enough to save us from the cancer of Islam; but not anymore. I think we’ll need to take a more direct approach to prevent the Islamization of the civilized world.
Susan Stavros says
May Jesus our Lord and saviour bless you..Muslims make the best Christians once they know the truth.
FYI says
I always tell muslims to read the koran for themselves,on their own,but AWAY from the imams and take a look at it critically.
A book that has errors in it cannot be called “perfect”
A book that gets Theology{!} wrong cannot possibly be from God.
{allah has MARY in his misunderstanding of the Christian Trinity alongside muslim “Jesus” and allah
koran 5:116.Absolutely Ridiculous…}
Even allah himself says that if you find ANY errors,even ONE in the koran, then it must come,not from allah but from “other than allah”{koran 4:82}which means it is entierly man-made.
If I was a muslim I’d be pretty angry at..the imams ,islamic “scholars” and ‘holy’ men as they are the ones LYING, hiding behind the Arabic nonsense.
muslims,when they discover the koran is plagiarized man-made nonsense usually then will attack the Bible but the problem is that allah CONFIRMS the Bible k3:3,even tells muhammed to consult those who know the Bible koran 10:94
And there is no evidence of any corruption in the Bible:it is the koran that is corrupted.
The koran confirms the Bible but the Bible does not confirm the koran.
Even when you show muslims all the errors in the koran however,the ‘holy’ men will REFUSE to see:after all they have a vested interest in not seeing the errors.
The evil continue to believe in it as it gives them freedom to do evil.
Ex-muslims will have figured it out about the “perfect” koran not being perfect,muhamed being a false prophet{even by his own admission al tabari 6;111} and allah{=muhammed’s sock puppet} is a false god that suits the Arabs.
Savvy Kafir says
It’s great that these kids in Turkey are wising up and turning away from Islam and superstition in general. But on the whole, Allah junkies in the rest of the Muslim world, and in the West, seem to be remarkably immune to logic, reason, and evidence.
mortimer says
Muslims leave Islam after reading Koran … apostate prophet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B4GMpJgD3A
gravenimage says
Good exchange.
I think the internet is a double-edged sword–it is a factor both in eroding the strangle-hold of Islam *and* in spreading its savagery.
Walter Schumm says
When our results are published on the history of Islam, it’s game over two.
mortimer says
Quite right. Islam is based on blind following of the mullahs. By allowing ordinary Muslims to read the Koran in their national languages, and allowing them to have independent, critical thoughts about the Koran, the mullahs risk being exposed for the habitual liars they are. They have been lying to Muslims world-wide for many decades by pretending that the 1924 REVISION of the Koran is in fact the original Koran. It is NOT. The 1924 Cairo Edition is a TEXTUAL REVISION composed of many editions that have been patched together with educated guesses. THERE IS NO COPY OF AN ORIGINAL KORAN SIGNED BY MOHAMMED … thus NO ONE may say what that looked like!
Furthermore, at least 37 OTHER Koran versions IN ARABIC are currently on sale … very embarrassing for all those THOUGHTLESS FOOLS and LIARS who have claimed that “THE KORAN HAS NEVER CHANGED … NOT EVEN ONE DOT!”
The historical critique of Islam and the textual criticism of the Koran is destroying Islam even more than the VICIOUS, BRUTAL, BRONZE-AGE ethics of the Koran as demonstrated by ISIS and Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and the Taliban.
Rufolino says
Hope to God this is true, but unfortunately there are too many fools in the world who will believe anything, and the supposedly lower IQ in the Moslem world isn’t going to help.
Ben Kennedy says
One thing to point out about what “mortimer” writes; Mohammedanism originated in the middle of the dark ages which places them about 1700 years after the Iron Age began. The Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age when the ancient Phoenicians (1500 to 300 B.C.) developed the smelting of iron, which gave them a military edge over bronze age militaries. Once the secret of smelting iron was out in the open, the Phoenicians began to fade away, replaced by other civilizations in ascendance (such as the Israelite King David:1010-970 BC, and his son Solomon: 970–931 BC). Mohammad’s lifetime (570 AD – 8 June 632 AD) during the period once commonly known to be the “Dark Ages” occurred more than a 1000 years after the commencement of the Iron Age, and about 500 years after the beginnings of the first century Christian Religion. I apologize if this sounds critical but human “ethics” have not changed since the age preceding the “Great Flood”. The earliest murder in recorded history is in the Holy Bible when Cain killed Able.
gravenimage says
Actually, human ethics *have* changed for civilized people. For those following the savagery of Islam, not so much.
mortimer says
Could it be Turkish teens realize the earth 1) IS NOT flat ‘like a bed’ (Qur’an 15:19 – madad = extend, stretch out as a bed or carpet) and 2) they realize the sun DOES NOT set in a ‘muddy spring’ (K.18.85 “ḥattā idhā balagha maghriba l-shamsi wajadahā taghrubu fī ʿaynin ḥami-atin = until when he reached setting place of the sun, he found it setting in a spring of dark mud”) ???
If the Koran is wrong about the earth and sun … about wife beating, raping married captives and killing disbelievers because they are disbelievers … what else is the Koran wrong about?
The great exodus from Islam will only SNOWBALL as ex-Muslims boldly attack Islam, the Koran and the lies of the mullahs.
The internet will continue to provoke the current exodus from Islam … almost every Muslim family now has apostates.
European pagan says
I read a comment posted by a Turkish guy whose parents were muslims but they could not read and write, they knew about Islam what they heard from their imam (hoca). This guy went to school and later read the Quran, and told his parents what he read. The whole family left Islam.
It’s good when young people wake up, because Islam can destroy everything. I know that in Turkey they write ‘Muslim’ into the passport without asking, I heard about a man who went to the office to remove that word from his passport or ID card ?
Quazgaa says
To the point.
As usual, Ms. Bulut doesn’t mince words.
gravenimage says
She is a great contributor here.
LB says
It is indeed refreshing to see a Turk speaking cold harsh truths about her nation’s bloody, unapologetic and often-glorified history of slaughter and enslavement. This is not something many (if any) Turks are willing to admit.
I personally know several non-muslim, pro-Kemalist Turks from Kushadasi (that was from a time when I wasn’t a passionate anti-jihadist; now I would never went to Turkey on vacation even if they payed me), and even though they are nice people and vocal Erdogan opponents saying how his islamization is killing tourism while reminiscing the “golden Ataturk times”, none of them would speak badly about their country and its history when I asked them.
My stance about Turkey will never change though. I’ll continue to insist that it is the most evil entity that exists on Earth today. The mere fact that Turks are on average “whiter” in pigment than any of their middle eastern cousins should tell you all you need to know about their gene pool and how they “acquired” it.
Rbla says
From Wikipedia: “These findings are consistent with a model in which the Turkic languages, originating in the Altai-Sayan region of Central Asia and northwestern Mongolia, were imposed on the indigenous peoples with genetic admixture, shows both ethnic mixing and linguistic replacement. Genetically, Anatolian Turks were more closely related also with Balkan populations than to the Central Asian populations in early history.”
Erdogan himself has a somewhat Greek look. Perhaps his psychological rejection of this has led him to his extreme Turkish chauvinism.
Some have raised the possibility that Ataturk was a member of the Doenmeh who are descendants of converted Jews.
MBR says
Not clear in article or comments but is there any distinction being made between schoolchildren who read the Koran in Arabic and those who read it in Turkish?
If so, a confounding factor could be that for Turkish children to read in Arabic presumably requires much more indoctrination and background in Islam generally from religious teachers and parents, whereas Turkish children reading it in Turkish will likely be more secular and thus be less predisposed to accept the Koran.
Could explain some of the difference?
Muruk says
Good thing.But I think the Turks in Germany dont read much the Quran…the Mosques are also organized from Turkey(DITIB).
For The Turks.Thats right,Turks came from Asia.Did Turks look asian?Most not!Some even look 100% Slavic/German.Yeah ofcourse that must be the ancestors of freed Slaves.
All the ethnics of the so called Turktribes look Asian-but the Turks who dont look Asian want an new Turk Empire haha…
gravenimage says
Some ethnic Turks look east Asian; many do not.
But most “Turks” from Turkey look like their Anatolian ancestors–because these are the people most modern Turks are descended from. In other words, they are basically Greek and Slavic, with a bit of Syrian thrown in.
gravenimage says
Turkey’s Diyanet: Schoolchildren leave Islam after reading the Koran
“The main arguments of atheists and deists are not philosophical today but are based on translations of the Koran,” Karadaş claimed. “The translations do not present [information on] the context. I think that a common work by the Diyanet and theology departments on this subject would be very appropriate and reverse the wind.
………………….
Ah–it’s the old “taking it out of context” argument. Apparently even Muslims take the vicious Qur’an “out of context”…
What a joke.
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
This article contains a few surprising statements.
[1] “Islam is the newest religion in Turkey.” Really? There are no Turkish followers of any religion invented since Islam was? No Mormons? No Scientologists (Hubbardites)?
[2] “In 2016, Altan was arrested for sending “subliminal messages” that allegedly encouraged the Turkish coup attempt planners.” Over what medium were these subliminal messages delivered? What did these subliminal messages say? If they were so subliminal, how were they ever discovered?
gravenimage says
Mark, Mormons and Scientologists are not recognized by Turkish authorities, and would generally have to keep *very* quiet.
James Lincoln says
I found a very pertinent video for this discussion:
“Jay Smith and Hatun Tash got up on their ladders at Speakers’ Corner to show 26 different Arabic Qur’ans to the world.
Muslims will not be able again to claim that the Qur’an is pure and unchanged, nor that it came from Allah.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y7eWEjBBw4
James Lincoln says
I found a very pertinent video for this discussion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y7eWEjBBw4
Relic says
translations of the Koran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOM0x0XDMo
G179 says
Poor baby. The translations are telling people the truth about what’s in there – calls for domestic violence, murder, religious hatred and what not – and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Tony Naim says
The local Muslim derebeys (valley lords) and the Ottoman state and army, via periodic acts of violence, special taxation (jizya), social segregation, systematic mistreatment and humiliation inexorably pushed the Christian population to Islamization for the sake of survival.”
The “LAWS OF DHIMMITUDE”, now silently brewing in America.
elee says
Funny, reading the Koran tends to have the same effect on adult men and women too. Maybe we should print them and give them out.