Edip Yüksel

EDIP YUKSEL, J.D., American-Turkish-Kurdish author and activist, was born in Turkey in 1957 the son of late Sadreddin Yuksel, a prominent Sunni scholar. During his youth he was an internationally active Islamist who spent over four years in Turkish prisons in the 1980's for his political writings and activities that promoted an Islamic revolution in Turkey.

While a popular Islamist author and youth leader, Edip adopted the Quran Alone philosophy after corresponding with Rashad Khalifa and reading his landmark book, Quran, Hadith and Islam. This led him to experience a paradigm change on 1st of July, 1986, transforming him from a Sunni polytheist to a reformed muslim, a peacemaker, and a rational monotheist. As a consequence, he was excommunicated and declared to be a heretic, an apostate deserving the death penalty. In 1989, he was sponsored for immigration to the USA by Rashad Khalifa and worked together for a year in Masjid Tucson, becoming a prominent member of the United Submitters International. However, shortly after the assassination of Rashad by a group of Sunni terrorists, he was excommunicated from the Submitters as he objected to an idol-carving gang that had infected the group with cult mentality and false ideas about Rashad.

Edip Yuksel is the author of over twenty books and hundreds of articles on religion, politics, philosophy and law in Turkish and English. His English books are recently published by Brainbow Press, which include:

• Quran: a Reformist Translation;
• Manifesto for Islamic Reform;
• Peacemakers Guide to Warmongers, and;
• NINETEEN: God’s Signature in Nature and Scripture.

Edip is the main organizer of the international Critical Thinkers for Islamic Reform conferences is the co-editor of the annual anthology carrying the same name.

After receiving his bachelor degrees from the University of Arizona in Philosophy and Near Eastern Studies, Edip received his law degree from the same university. Besides writing and lecturing, Edip works as an Adjunct Philosophy professor at Pima Community College. Edip is fluent in Turkish, English and Classic Arabic; proficient in Persian, and barely conversant in Kurdish, his mother tongue. Edip is the founder of Islamic Reform and co-founder of MPJP organizations. His online books, interviews, and articles are published at various Internet sites, including:

www.19.org
www.yuksel.org
www.quranix.com
www.islamicreform.org
www.quranmiracles.com
www.free-minds.org
www.quranic.org
www.quran.org
www.tanzil.net
www.mpjp.org