OKTAR BABUNA: Your life is an excellent model anyway. You have already talked about this before, but you were very young when you came and begun your work in Istanbul. You went straight in among the communists. They threatened to kill you. And following that, six years later, solitary confinement, and then the mental hospital, it all began. Insha'Allah. It has been going on like this non-stop for the last 30 years, without a break, masha'Allah. You have said, you have seen how dishonest it would be to say "Hold on, let me first become an interior designer and get married, let me first have a family, earn money and establish a career, insha'Allah."

ADNAN OKTAR:  First off, it was a school with lots of communists. What would one say? One would say "this is an awkward place, I had best not go there." Or even if he does go, and here I am referring to dishonest types, who think in that way, he would say "it is better that I hide that I am a Muslim and behave like a disbeliever(kafir)." Right? He would say "I had best not preach, or talk about the Qur'an or Islam, or make the slightest sound, or make my presence felt until I graduate." And that is what many people did at that time. I thought that such a thing would be very bad, very wrong. I thought that even if they killed me I would be a martyr. If they intend to kill me, to martyr me, then I would be a martyr and that would be fine. I thought hiding away at home would be a disgraceful and humiliating act. Then if I got married, I would have to devote 70%-80% to that. And that was out of the question. I cannot devote 70%-80% of my time to that because I am someone who can preach a lot. 'Why should I devote my time to that,' I asked myself. Right? For instance financially.. We did not have that much money in those days. School and all.. I had taken loans from the Student Loans Institution. I have had some money I have received from home, from my family. For instance, my mother used to give me money for clothes and I would go and invest it in books and in distributing books. I used to distribute books free of charge. Moreover, the lowest parts of my trousers were worn through and I had glued it from the inside and patched it. But I did not buy any new clothes. Because I was thinking about it but I couldn't feel relieved with the thought. That was because if I had spent it on clothes, we would be losing the effect of loads of books.  It was urgent, my work was very urgent because the school was under communist control. Darwinism and materialism had to be defeated at once. Atheist ideas had to be eliminated. And at school if I went to class I would lose time, it would take up 7-8 hours of my time. So I preached the word until evening. Then we had a modeling class. I used to take that class, and the teachers were amazed. It took me only an hour to make a model that took my friends all day to make. They used to start working on it at 8:30 am and could only finish it by 5:00 -5:30 pm. And I was able to finish it in an hour or so. I organized my time very well, spending my time on preaching. The teachers were really amazed. Most of them are still alive and they would know. Most of them would remember me, no need to list them one by one here but most of them would know me. I adopted an attitude that was concentrated directly on Allah. I mean all my means and money. For instance I was left a share in a house by an aunt, which was quite a lot of money in those days. It was the equivalent of 140 billion lira in today’s money. I spent it all on books and distributing them free of charge at that time. I spent it all on my work. All the money was spent there, I spent it all. My friends know that, everyone knows. I was left without a penny and it was a source of gratification for me. What sense would there be in sitting back and buying a home with it? That would be saying I am thinking of my future, when Allah could take my soul at any moment. How could I live in peace in that house while there is so much disquiet outside? When irreligion and atheism were so widespread? The environment in the school was rotten. It was really hard days. Insha'Allah, I mean it in intellectual terms, of course. But Allah produced results from our efforts. But they threw me into a mental hospital, and I was also imprisoned and detained many times. The police were all over me like a rash in those days. Police used to come to my house many times through the week. But I was never worn down by it. My mother, for instance, was very concerned by the police coming. But I couldn't care less. My mother's concern did not affect me either. I would never give up just because my mother was unhappy. I am not that kind of lily-livered person, insha'Allah. That is unacceptable. Whether or not someone is distressed will not influence me. My career and all that wouldn't concern me at all. My sole aim in that was Allah’s approval. They used to say the most unbelievable things to me, like "You are swimming in dangerous waters, what is it to you? Let the Religious Affairs Office of the state take care of it. What concern is it of yours? You are a person without the proper training. You have no religious training. Why is the task on you? Preaching is the task of the imams in the mosques. What business is it of yours?" I have heard the most inconceivable words. They put me in a mental hospital, and this time I worked to prove I was not mentally ill. I was put in a position to show the report to people, saying "see I am not mentally ill, I have report". I mean, I was striving to tell these things to these types who sit in leisure at home. I am referring to certain people, with their beards down to their waists. I was trying to tell these to such people. For instance, I spent years saying "I never used cocaine" until I got the message across. Such people were saying, "It is possible, you might have gotten bored and tried it." Look, they actually believed that. Right? They didn't say "that is apparently a false allegation". They just said "it is possible that you have used it out of boredom." I have shown them the Forensic Medicine report and the court rulings and how I was acquitted by the courts and could only make them see after striving at great length. That was the same in Ebru Şimşek affair as well. Since such people never live in a risk, and they never take risks of any kind, they never encounter such things anyway. They are amazed at the situation of those who do and gossip about them. So, on the one hand they gorge on their rice and fruit puddings, while on the other hand they watch the television and say, "See, what he has been up to now?" So we then have to deal with them, as well. We wore ourselves to the bone trying to tell people the true facts of the Ebru Şimşek affair. "Look brother", we said, "in the house we stayed in, there are no beams or joists hanging down. There are no joists. We said ours is an ashmolean ceiling. It is a perfectly flat ceiling. And I said "I showed both houses to the people in the court." I told them these. We have shown them to the judges. Moreover, even though it should have been the court itself, setting the system to see those, we brought the system and set it out. I mean, see what we had to do to save trouble. We brought and set up two TV systems. We brought an expert along. The house was filmed in the presence of a notary. Then we brought in the footage of that woman’s home and had them compared. We said the ceiling in my home is completely flat, an ashmolen ceiling. There are no beams or joists hanging down. That is not the case. But in her house there are joists hanging from the ceiling. The expert witness said "that would be impossible unless the house was torn down and entirely rebuilt. The two houses are different." We also brought the title deed floor plans along and they had compared it with the plan of that house. They were totally different. We showed them the construction plans. 

OKTAR BABUNA: It was an apartment, really small, and the other was a four-storey villa.

ADNAN OKTAR:  Yes, one was just 60 or so square meters, and the other was a villa of around 1000 meters. There is a huge difference in between. 

PRESENTER:  They are very different in comparison.

ADNAN OKTAR:  There is a huge difference, of course. The windows go from floor to ceiling in my home. There, in that house, the windows were small and double-glazed. We had proved this before the court and were acquitted. That was not reported in the press. So we had to tell people one by one, house by house. We told everyone, my Muslim brothers, non-Muslims, believers and non-believers. See how a person in jihad is put in a position to explain these things and to expose that these were all conspiracies. You do not spend your time preaching alone, you also spend time taking intensive precautions to ensure people do not gossip against you and preventing similar plots in the future. Recently, for instance, they came up with another plot. There is a new one going on now. We are now busy with that as well. They got 4-5 people together and had each of them make some allegations. One was a former colleague of ours who used to live with us. He is someone who lived with us for 20 years, and he went and said; "they are a criminal gang". But if we were a criminal gang, what were you doing with us for the last 20 years? Why did you eat what Muslims should have eaten, and lived at their home? Were you blind for those 20 years? Right? You did this from the age of 20 to 40. But when he reached the age of 40 and he saw he had neither a car, nor a house nor money nor anything. He made nothing from the community. From our group of friends, I should say, rather than community. So what happened? We suddenly became a criminal gang, in his eyes. He went and gave evidence as a secret witness. But when we look at the statement we can see it clearly, that is just like him. Just as we learned about it afterwards it was him, and he had told everyone around him anyway. Now we have to go and disprove that. We are now busy with that guy's false calumnies. I also have to deal with a hypocrite like that. We have to struggle with such people with such hypocritical nature as well. We have to put an effort in that front as well. They rounded up young women and girls and made them say the most incredible things. They then regretted it and said they were tricked. They explicitly said that the police threatened them and frightened them, and that they had to say what they did. But they said it was all in fact groundless. This time we have to disprove those allegations one by one. We both preach and also struggle against such slanders and also struggle with their counter attacks. I mean, we are busy in such intense activities. But this is an activity with a recognized worth. A Muslim should be like this. That is what they call "jihad". And this is even the less than we can deal with. It is many times worth the sacrifice on the path of Allah, isn't it? But qe could have sat at home like them and eaten rice and melon and said this was Sunna, couldn't we? We could have grown a beard down to our waists, and got married and had a career and all the rest, had we gone ahead with that mindset and logic. But as a result of our struggles, we have torn Darwinism apart in Turkey; 99% of our people no longer believe in Darwinism. We also strove with all our might for the development of Turkish-Islamic union. And you have seen the huge response. See that the main lines of a Turkish-Islamic Union have already formed. The building has gone up, the furniture has been moved in, and we are just waiting for the tenants, for Hazrat Mahdi (pbuh). Of course, they have erected the building, insha'Allah, and everything is ready. Look, Khameini made a statement about Turkish-Islamic union again, didn't he? And he says that Islamic countries should unite as well. They say there should be an Islamic NATO. There are now attempts on that end. It is just what Said Nursi is referring to. He says there will be "an army of millions, and army consisting of millions of Muslims in the time of Hazrat Mahdi (pbuh)." Said Nursi speaks of an army with millions of members. That is where we are headed.