A9TV; September 17th, 2011
Secularism is a precaution and a blessing against hypocricy. There is secularism in the Qur’an’s spirit. That is to say, you feel respect to a Christian, to a Jew, to an atheist, idolator. You live by your religion in the most beautiful form. You interfere in no-one’s affairs. And no-one can interfere in your religion. That is it.
The Qur’an is freedom from start to finish. It breaks the chains. It produces a world that is as free as can be. It gives us complete democracy. The Qur’an gives us the conception of secularism. People learned that afterward. They learned it from the uncorrupted parts of the Torah, and the uncorrupted parts of the Psalms. For example, they took the Marxist conception of social justice from the Torah. Belief in the Mahdi was taken from the Torah, from the Psalms and from the Qur’an. Karl Marx sought to turn it into a false way of the Mahdi. He tried to turn it into dictatorship and pain. The demolition of Darwinism was vitally important. It was a secret scourge. The real infection. But a secret infection. People looked at their bodies and could not see it. But the disease was there, in their lungs and livers. But I surgically removed it with scholarship and science and love.
Turkey currently has a radiant and devout society. The environment was terrible in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. May Allah forbid! Bigotry was everywhere. It was bigotry that tore down the Ottoman Empire, backward thinking. Everyone knows that. That is a fact. We must make good use of the opportunity Ataturk has given us. We must cling tightly to secularism. Secularism is the cure for hypocrisy. When you put secularism on a wound, it kills the hypocrisy there. Hypocrisy cannot remain. That is secularism. Democracy opens people’s minds. There is no totalitarian structure or system in democracy. We must cling tightly to them both. And we must respect people’s idea of freedom. We must avoid all pressure. Using compulsion is a violation of morality. Almighty Allah says, “there is no compulsion in the religion” in one verse. Simple as that. There is nothing else to say about the verse. No ifs and buts. If Almighty Allah says there is no compulsion in religion, that is an end of the matter, insha’Allah