To Jimmy and Aksel

I dedicate this work to my sons, Jimmy and Aksel.

Jimmy turned eighteen on 22 September 2026; from here on, he picks his own road. Aksel is right behind him.

I have given years to this in my own words translation, and I am doing it for you. Whenever you get curious, open it up. I will keep adding, verse by verse; read it at your own pace.

May the one true Lord, full of love and endlessly forgiving, help us all.

Jimmy's real, official Turkish name is Derin, but I gave him the name Jimmy so life in Canada would be easier for him. It was sometime in the 2010s — 2011 or 2012, I think — when I gave him that name. So Jimmy was 3 or 4 years old. We would be out walking in High Park in Toronto and Canadians would ask Derin, "What's your name?" He didn't want to say "Derin," because people didn't get it — and they didn't get it when I said it either. His mom and I had actually thought Canadians would find "Derin" easy, but it didn't work out that way. First I tried "George," but he didn't want to say that one either. Then there was a Turkish guy in Edmonton who called himself Jimmy. Derin liked that name, and after that he said his name without any trouble — and he still does.

Why does this work exist?

My dad wasn't a religious man, but he was a good man. He carried a lot of fears, and some of them passed on to me, and probably on to my kids too — fears, hesitations. I hope this work helps me and my children shake off some of those fears. I remember asking my dad whether God really exists. I must have been in elementary school. He told me this: on TV it looks like there are people inside the screen, but there aren't — well, God looks like He isn't there, but He is. That explanation made a lot of sense to me, and ever since that day I have believed God exists — but not as some being sitting up in the sky, watching us all the time and itching to punish us. What settled in me was something that never seems to be there at all, yet is always watching over us and looking after us.

I learned the real meaning of the sentence La ilahe illa Allah while I was studying at Boğaziçi University, from people doing a book display in the library — there were dozens of black-bound books. I can't remember the author's name now, but I remember they were bound in black and printed not on the yellowish paper other books used, but photocopied onto plain white A4 paper, with black covers. I bought quite a few of them. They taught me a lot — the way things were explained, and the examples, were really good. Here's one nice example that stuck with me: a person thinks they're the car. Imagine you have lived inside a car from the moment you were born; you can never get out of it — you live inside the car your whole life. Then you would think you are the car. Well, our bodies are like that. Because we've lived inside a body since the day we were born, we think we are our bodies. But really, we are souls living inside a body. Anyway, I was going to explain what La ilahe illa Allah means; one thing led to another and look where we ended up. :)

The first thing to notice in La ilahe illa Allah is the relationship between the words "ilah" and "Allah" — the word "ilah" is inside the word "Allah." You can read it as Al-ilah, so think of it like "the" in English: "the ilah." "Ilah" means god — and "the ilah" (Allah) means the one God. So we can translate La ilahe illa Allah like this: There is no god, there is the God! Or, to make it easier to grasp, here's my own meaning-based rendering: there are no gods, there is only one God. The truth is, we're surrounded by tiny little gods. First of all, our mom and dad are like gods to us; whatever they want happens — in our first few years, and later on in certain big decisions, they have power over us. Other examples of gods with power over us: our teachers, our elders, our bosses, our managers, relatives, friends, neighbours, "what will people say," and now LLMs (as in, what will people say and what will the LLM say! :) ). Every single day we deal with dozens of gods who have (some) say over us. That's what La ilahe illa Allah tells us: those dozens of gods around you aren't real; there is one God whose word you actually need to follow. And that one isn't very visible, so there's no god outside your conscience. That's how I thought and lived through my childhood and my young years, and that's why working for a salary was always hard for me — apart from 3 years at TÜBİTAK Gebze MAM, 3 years at Alcatel in Istanbul, and 4 years at eHealth Ontario in Toronto, I couldn't stay anywhere for long.

Because TÜBİTAK MAM was in Gebze and my parents' house was in Küçükçekmece, the shuttle rides were very long, and I got to read a huge number of books. Most of them were about Sufism. I read Yunus Emre's life in detail; Mustafa Sandal in my ears, Yunus Emre's life and poems in my hands.

Going back and forth with Yunus Emre's life and Mustafa Sandal's songs — one day I was heading to work so tired that, with the sky still dark in the morning, I fell asleep. I woke up and looked around; the dark sky was getting lighter, but I couldn't tell — was it getting lighter, or getting darker? I seriously wondered: am I going to work, or heading home? And then this poem came to me:

Are you the one leaving?
Are you the one arriving?
Are you the one who
knows yourself?

And in another poem of mine:

Can we be angry at a bird for singing?
Or can we be angry at a lion for roaring?
Yes, we get angry,
not knowing that the one we take for a human
might actually be a bird
or a lion

So, as someone who has thought long and hard about Sufism, I'm now working on a in my own words translation of the Qur'an. The reason is this: I believe that in the age of AI, there is something inside a human being more valuable than intelligence — and to find it, the most reliable source I know is the Qur'an.

I'm doing this work for myself, for other people, but most of all for my two sons, whom I love as much as my own life. I don't need to do it for my wife, Aslı; she's already an angel, my angel!

My sons and I need it, but we also need some guidance to find our souls. I hope this work is useful to me, to my sons, and to others.

May the one true Lord, full of love and endlessly forgiving, be our helper.
Peace, calm, and well-being be upon you,

Orhan KALAYCI
22 September 2026
Istanbul
orhan@kalayci.com