Muslim Creationism

In its 29 August, 2007, edition the left-leaning daily il Manifesto, published in Rome, the Italian capital, carried an article reflecting the impact of Atlas of Creation in Italy. The report, written by Silvia Bencivelli, contained the following lines under the heading “Muslim Creationism:”

“… When Flavio Costantini opened his mailbox at the University of Pisa shortly before the summer vacation, he received a surprise: a seven-kilo package in his name sent from Hungary with DHL. The blue cover of this mysterious book had golden writing and unfamiliar designs on it…

A hundred kilometers away, at the Institute of Plant Protection in Florence, Silvia Fineschi opened a similar package containing the same enormous book: a cloth cover, gold-leafed texts and the rest covered in images. This book was the same as those also received by Roberto Danzo of Nicolò Tron in Schio and other colleges in Rome, Novara, Ancona, Turin, Bari and Parma. The same volume had also been sent to high-level educational institutions in Pisa, some public libraries and museums of natural history. Ten copies arrived for the editors of il Manifesto, and we assume that copies were sent to others as well… Atlas of Creation, by the Turkish author Harun Yahya, was delivered to their doors.

The book’s thesis is easily understandable from just a few short lines: ‘Fossils reveal that the life forms on Earth have undergone not the slightest change and never developed from one another. This demonstrates an unquestionable fact: Living things did not come into being through imaginary evolutionary processes. Every living thing on Earth has been created by Allah (God).’ …

Photographs of fossils alongside their present-day counterparts appear all through the book’s 600 colored pages. The text that appears immediately beneath repeats more or less the same thing each time: Fossil remains are the same as life forms in existence today, which shows that species have not altered in time.

This is followed by a 125-million-year-old life form from Brazil, a herring from Wyoming dating back to the Eocene epoch, three oysters, a Jurassic lobster from Germany, various trilobites, a nautilus from the Mediterranean, a panda from China, and even a dragonfly that was flying 10 million years ago. Under these are shown a present-day herring, oyster, lobster, crustaceans, a dragonfly and a panda with its bamboo.

The photographs are very beautiful, bright and large (57 x 37 centimeters when the book is opened)… Following the 600 pages of photographs comes another section, some 200 pages in length, titled ‘The Collapse of the Theory of Evolution.’ For example, you see that the theory of evolution ‘consists of an adaptation to nature of the ancient dogma of materialist philosophy’ and that ‘violent ideologies such as racism, fascism and communism, and many other barbaric world views based on conflict have all drawn strength from this deception.’ Darwinism is at the same time the source of terrorism: the words ‘No matter what ideology they may espouse, those who perpetrate terror all over the world are, in reality, Darwinists’ appear immediately beneath a picture of the attack on the Twin Towers.

So who is the author of this book? Name in gold letters on the cover reads Harun Yahya, the pen name of Adnan Oktar (Harun is Aaron and Yahya is John – the names of two prophets). This gentleman is 51 years old and known as a ‘prominent Turkish intellectual.’…

Oktar founded the Science Research Foundation, or BAV (Bilim Arastirma Vakfi) for short, in 1990. The American magazine Science described this organization as ‘one of the world’s strongest antievolution movements outside of North America.’ …

BAV published some 250 books in these years and, according to Oktar, these represent a total of more than 45 million pages. The books have been translated into 57 languages, including Urdu, Swahili, Hausa and Dhivehi. Nearly all deal with evolution…

Some 190 documentary films have been produced, and ten million copies have been distributed worldwide and Oktar states that they have been aired on 100 different television channels in 20 countries. The internet contains many web pages linked to the BAV and mentioning the name of Harun Yahya. Needless to say, some of his books are on sale at very reasonable prices on Amazon. Atlas of Creation, which has been delivered to our schools, universities, research centers and museums of science in Italy in recent weeks can be purchased over the internet for 75.45 Euros…

In addition, Atlas of Creation was not just sent out to educate Italians, because the same book was distributed to science teachers all over the Western world…

One was even placed in our library. This can be verified on the internet, the Piemonte University Faculty of Sciences has catalogued it…”