Edip Yuksel - Biography

Biography

Yuksel was born in Turkey in 1957 into a Kurdish family. His father, Sadreddin Yuksel, an Islamic scholar, taught Arabic at a Turkish university. His brother, Metin Yüksel was assassinated by nationalists. Yuksel says that he was an outspoken Islamist as a youth, and spent years in prison for his views. Yuksel says that he broke with Islamism in 1986 and adopted the Qur'an Alone philosophy as preached by Rashad Khalifa, the inspiration of the United Submitters International whose beliefs include: the dedication of all worship practices to God alone, upholding the Quran alone, and rejecting the Islamic traditionalist hadith and sunnah attributed to Muhammad. Because of this, Yuksel's traditionalist father, Sadreddin, declared his son an apostate, and he received many death threats from Orthodox Muslims.

In 1989, he was sponsored for immigration to the US by Khalifa. Yuksel moved to Tucson, entered college, got a legal degree, and became a prominent member of the United Submitters International. He became a U.S. citizen in 1993.

Professor Aisha Musa, from Florida International University, says in her book Hadith as Scripture about Yuksel:

"Edip Yuksel, is a prominent figure among advocates of the doctrine of Qur'an alone. His works are published in the traditional print media, and he also maintains two active websites.Born and raised in Turkey, Yuksel comes from a traditional Sunni background. Although Yuksel initially came to his belief that the Qur'an is the only legitimate source of religious guidance in Islam, his own writings show much more independence than does the work of Kassim Ahmad. Like Khalifa and Ahmad, Yuksel rejects the Hadith using the same Qur'anic criteria. However, he differs with Khalifa in his interpretation of the Qur'an on a number of issues, . Yuksel's work represent a new trend that has emerged in the modern-day Qur'anist movement in the last several years,"

He now teaches Philosophy and Logic at Pima Community College and Medical Ethics and Criminal Law courses at Brown Mackie College. He taught Turkish to high school students at a Charter School Accelerated Learning Laboratory, where one of his two sons attend.