The evolution controversy in the Islamic world

Top: A Darwin-to-Hitler collage from Harun Yahya's The Atlas of Creation
Bottom: Adnan Oktar, whose pen name is Harun Yahya.
Images courtesy harunyahya.com

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A number of articles about the evolution controversy in the Islamic world have recently appeared [1] [2] [3] [4].

One of the articles says,
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. . . .only 25 percent of adults in Turkey agree that human beings developed from earlier species of animals, whereas 40 percent of people in the United States agree with this scientific fact, Hameed writes. And Turkey is one of the most secular and educated of Muslim countries.

Hameed cites data from a 2007 sociological study by Riaz Hassan which revealed that only a minority in five Muslim countries agree that Darwin’s theory of evolution is probably or most certainly true: 16 percent of Indonesians, 14 percent of Pakistanis, 8 percent of Egyptians, 11 percent of Malaysians and 22 percent of Turks.

I have not seen much hand-wringing going on these Islamic countries in regard to how widespread disbelief in Darwinism has hurt their technological competitiveness.

The Harun Yahya website is really good, with a lot of scientific arguments against evolution and with articles with titles like the following:

The Darwinist Techniques of Clamor and Demagoguery

Darwinist Dictatorship -- Darwinism is a shamanist religion

Darwinism is the religion of the antichrist

The Global Darwinist Dictatorship Must Apologize to the Entire World!

I especially liked the Harun Yahya article "A whale fantasy from National Geographic." My blog also has an article about whale evolution. This all reminds me of Kirk Douglas singing in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," "Got a whale of a tale to tell ye lads, a whale of a tale or two . . . . "

A 2006 article says about intelligent design,

Intelligent design, a more recent argument about life’s origins that is championed by U.S. Christian groups, may also be making the leap across the Atlantic.

The concept's proponents say some organisms are too complex to have evolved without some superior cause, but avoid calling that cause God, for fear that such a reference would ban the concept from U.S. science textbooks. Last year, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that even the intelligent-design formulation represented a strain of religious thought that should not be advocated in public schools.

Akyol, a Muslim believer who says Darwinism is incompatible with his faith, has been waging an uphill struggle to popularize intelligent design here. But most Turks show no interest because they see no need to avoid naming God.

His lonely campaign got an unexpected boost last month when Education Minister Huseyin Celik hinted on television that he might want to see it added to Turkish textbooks.

“If it’s wrong to say Darwin’s theory should not be in the books because it is in line with atheist propaganda, we can’t disregard intelligent design because it coincides with beliefs of monotheistic religions about creation,” he told CNN Turk.

So far the Clergy Letter folks have posted letters only for Christian clergy and rabbis to sign -- there is no letter yet for imams and ayatollahs. Maybe those Clergy Letter people are afraid that they would get a fatwa for insulting Islam.
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