'Muslim creationism is back in the news' - 16.11.2009 United Kingdom/Reuters

On 16 November, 2009, Reuters news agency, which enjoys an international following and represents a source of information for 1 billion people a day, carried a report titled "Muslim creationism is back in the news, this time in Egypt." Tom Heneghan, from the Reuters Paris office, reported on his FaithWorld blog:

Muslim creationism is back in the news. There’s been a spate of articles in the US and British press recently about the spread of this scripture-based challenge to Darwinian evolution among Muslims, mostly in the Middle East but also in Europe… Reuters first wrote about it in 2006 — “Creation vs. Darwin takes Muslim twist in Turkey” – and this blog has run several posts on the issue, including an INTERVIEW WITH ISLAM’S MOST PROMINENT CREATIONIST, HARUN YAHYA. WHAT’S NEW IS THAT THESE IDEAS SEEM TO BE SPREADING and academics who defend evolution are holding conferences to discuss the phenomenon.

There are too many recent articles about Islamic creationism out there now to discuss each one separately… New York Times… Washington Post… Boston Globe… Slate… Guardian… National… Beliefnet… MANY OF THESE ARTICLES HIGHLIGHT THE ROLE OF HARUN YAHYA… But as Michael Reiss, a London education professor and Anglican priest told the Guardian, “What the Turks believe today is what the Germans and British believe tomorrow… These things can no longer be thought of as occurring in other countries.”

In the Muslim World, Creationism Is on the Rise - 25.10.2009 USA/The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe is a daily published in Boston, Massachusetts with a circulation of half a million. It carried an article titled “In the Muslim World, Creationism Is on the Rise” on 25October 2009. This article draws attention to the impact of Mr. Adnan Oktar’s works on the Islamic world. Some of the information written in the article about the collapse of the evolution theory:

… there is another creationist movement whose influence is growing, and which is fueling challenges to science in countries where Christianity has little sway: Islamic creationism. Campaigners in countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, and Indonesia have fought the teaching of evolution in schools there… Creationist conferences have been held in Pakistan, and moderate Islamic clerics are on record publicly condemning Darwin’s ideas. A recent study of Muslim university students in the Netherlands showed that most rejected evolution. And driven in part by a Turkish publishing organization, Islamic creationism books are HOT SELLERS at bookstores throughout the Muslim world.

And as the Internet facilitates THE SPREAD OF… ANTI-EVOLUTIONARY IDEAS, the debate over evolution seems to be sharpening… More recently, the debate in Turkey has been stirred up by the writings and public pronouncements of Adnan Oktar, who …. HAS BECOME ONE OF MUSLIM CREATIONISM’S LOUDEST VOICES. Oktar, who writes under the pen-name Harun Yahya… waging, through its website as well as videos and lavishly produced books... Yahya’s 800-page, 13-pound opus, The Atlas of Creation, can be found in bookstores all over the Muslim world…

Illustrated in the Atlas with hundreds of full-page photographs of fossils and modern-day animals, Yahya’s argument is that, though Earth may indeed be billions of years old, the plants and animals that live on it have not changed at all over that time, existing today in the same form in which they were originally - and divinely - created. “When one looks at a 100 million year-old spider fossil on one side and to a living spider on the other, he can not see the slightest difference. He witnesses it himself and there is no need to be a scientist to grasp it. Even a primary school student can understand it. THAT IS WHY DARWINISTS ARE AT A LOSS,” Oktar wrote in response to e-mailed questions… Asked why biologists around the world espouse the theory of evolution, Oktar blames “A SCIENTIFIC DICTATORSHIP UNDER THE SWAY OF FREEMASONRY.”

… [It was] found that in Egypt and Pakistan, while the official high school curriculum does include evolution, many of the teachers there don’t believe in it themselves, and will often tell their students so. The McGill researchers also found that in Indonesia, TEACHERS USED YAHYA’S ATLAS OF CREATION AS A TEACHING AID.