Biography of Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya

Adnan Oktar, who writes his books under the pen-name "Harun Yahya", is an idealist person who devoted his entire life to share his views on the existence and unity of God and the graces of the Quranic morals with other people. Starting from his university years, he has spent every moment of his life, serving to this cause and never dreaded facing difficulties. There has been several campaigns of persecution against Mr. Oktar because of his faith and ministry. He has been arrested many times, kept in custody, tortured by Turkish authorities for many months,

but always found innocent at the end. Today, he still stands firmly against all the pressure and slanders that he confronts by displaying the same patience and fortitude.

Below, you will find the brief biography of Adnan Oktar, whose works you will find on website listed at the end of the page.

Adnan Oktar was born in 1956 in Ankara and spent his life in Ankara until the end of high school. His commitment to Islam got even more steadfast during high school years. Reading various religious books during this period, he gained profound knowledge about Islam. Moreover, he himself grasped important facts and decided to share these with the people surrounding him. In 1979, Adnan Oktar moved to Istanbul to attend Mimar Sinan University. It was by this time that he undertook the mission to call people to the faith and morals of Islam.

Years in Mimar Sinan University
By the time Adnan Oktar entered Istanbul Mimar Sinan University, the school was already under the influence of various illegal Marxist organizations and militantly atheistic views were prevalent in the university. Everyone, be him a faculty member or a student, was a materialist adhering to the atheist way of thinking. Indeed, instructors took every opportunity to propagate the materialistic philosophy and Darwinism in their lectures albeit irrelevant with their topic.

In an environment where each and every religious and moral value was disrespected and outright rejected, Adnan Oktar started to call the people around him to the unity and existence of God. As may be understood, under such circumstances, any theistic idea was not given an opportunity to gain ground. As Mediha Oktar, his mother, relates, during that period he only had a few hours sleep each night, spending his time reading, taking notes and keeping files. He read hundreds of books, including the basic works on Marxism, communism and materialistic philosophy and thoroughly studied the books on secular ideologies, both classical works and rarely-read ones. He worked on them, marking the significant sections and taking notes at the back. He became highly knowledgeable about these philosophies and ideologies, far better than their own advocates. He also made extensive research on the evolutionary theory, the allegedly scientific basis of these ideologies, and gathered documents and information about it.