1. Turan Dursun was a Turkish author and atheist who was a critic of Islam.
20 Facts About Turan Dursun
1. 2.
Turan Dursun was frequently threatened by Islamic fundamentalists, and on 4 September 1990 was assassinated outside his home in Istanbul, after which his books sold tens of thousands of copies in Turkey.
3.
Turan Dursun's father was an ethnic Turk and his mother was an ethnic Kurd.
4.
Turan Dursun had to complete primary school exams without attending school and did so with understandable speed.
5.
Whilst the mufti of Sivas, Turan Dursun began establishing himself as a mufti of a different kind.
6.
Turan Dursun gained a lot of followers and enemies at Sivas and was threatened on numerous occasions.
7.
Turan Dursun was exiled to the city of Sinop and stayed in what he called a "broken down shack".
8.
Turan Dursun felt sorry for Sabo and one night during his sleep he saw God in his dream.
9.
Turan Dursun discovered what he called "Muhammad's passings on" when he began learning about the holy books that existed prior to the Quran.
10.
Turan Dursun began researching into Christianity when it was planned that he would be proudly introduced to the Pope as an intellectual mufti.
11.
Turan Dursun was an independent theist for a short period of time before he became an atheist.
12.
Turan Dursun undertook experiments to see if God existed or not during his mental battle with him.
13.
Turan Dursun began believing that humans evolved over millions of years and continued learning about anthropology.
14.
Turan Dursun stated that his independent theist period lasted "two or three years".
15.
The decision to quit as a mufti was tough, but Turan Dursun stated that his principle was always "never to have a contradiction between what I thought and what I did".
16.
Turan Dursun resigned from TRT in 1982, after 16 years of service.
17.
In 1987, Turan Dursun was introduced to Dogu Perincek, a self-proclaimed socialist politician with heavy nationalist undertones, who was the editor of the magazine 2000'e Dogru.
18.
Turan Dursun contributed to the magazine with a column titled "Din Bilgisi".
19.
Turan Dursun wrote countless books in the 1980s, including a Turkish translation of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah, collating his vast knowledge of Islam and languages of the Middle East, opening the religion to internal criticism through the mass media, perhaps for the first time in the religion's history.
20.
On 4 September 1990, shortly after leaving his home in the Asian part of Istanbul on his way to work, Turan Dursun was assassinated by two gunmen.